Greetings from South-Central Texas

Hello everyone! My name is Riley and I am new to foundry work. My background is mostly in leatherwork as both an artist and functional crafter. I began leather crafting in my father's taxidermy shop at the age of about 5, and have since gone on to study under a saddler, a clothier, and a carver. I have long been interested in being able to cast some of my own hardware and decorative pieces (I enjoy doing costume pieces and historical reproductions) and so my interest in foundry work was born.

I have been educating myself on metallurgy and foundry work for a couple of years now, but only acquired my foundry equipment this past year. I was fortunate to be able to purchase my foundry setup from another local artist at a steal of a deal for barely used and well-cared for equipment. I have a 5kg Cast Master Elite furnace and a 10kg unbranded exact copy (minus the refractory cement coating) of a Devil Forge. With those furnaces I was also provided some of the basic supplies/accessories, but very little by way of PPE. I've been slowly buying or fabricating my PPE (bought a good pair of leather gloves, but I'm making my apron, for example). I am also fabricating my own lifting tongs and pouring shank as per the plans made by Bob from "The Art of Boat Building" (YouTube/Patreon). I have recently started preparing a permanent outdoor area for my foundry, current plan is for a 10x15-foot area with sand ground cover and fenced off to keep the ranch animals away. I'm also building a "table" for making my sand molds to keep my petrobond in, and that will store most of the rest of everything underneath the sand table. I also now have a 100-pound propane cylinder with an adjustable regulator and braided stainless steel hose.

I am beginning my foundry experience by working with aluminum because it's cheaper for me to learn with (I can get A356 castable aluminum from car rims at the local scrap yard for about $1/pound). Eventually though, I want to get into brass and bronze casting, with the occasional dip into casting iron for some of the reusable foundry accessories I want (for example, the cope/drag alignment catches I'd like to use eventually, uniform weights to keep the cope from floating, etc). I am also starting with sand casting, though I want to eventually also get into investment casting for more detailed pieces (like the parts for a Star Wars blaster "pistol" prop that I want to cast out of aluminum but is far too detailed to sand cast many of the parts).

I am mostly here to learn and ask questions. I may have been studying up on this for a while but other than the one melt I have done to cast a basic aluminum ingot, I have zero experience with this. I look forward to interacting with y'all, and to learning from the collective experience here.


This is an example of some of my leatherwork. This round panel will eventually become the front of a woman's "rope can" style purse. The finish turned out as a very nice patinaed bronze which is far more accurate looking than I expected.


This is my foundry setup as-purchased. I have since added much to the PPE, purchased new crucibles, and in general improved my approach to safety.

 

Hello Riley, welcome to the forum.
It looks like you are getting well set up with your melting gear, workspace, and PPE.
That tooled leather piece has a nice design and patina, thanks for including that with the other picture.
Curious if tooled leather would ram up in a sand mold...

 

Thank you for the welcome! I’m excited to finish getting set up and start melting and casting soon. I’ve got a couple of nice 3D printed ingots I’m going to use to get started with the sand molding. Then, hopefully on to more adventurous stuff, lol.

I don’t know how well carved/stamped/tooled leather would ram up in casting sand, but now that you’ve brought it up I guess I’m going to have to try that out at some point…for science!

 

Thank you! I enjoy sharing pictures, though I try not to flood posts with them, lol.

I do not yet 3D print my own parts, I either order them online or I get a friend to print for me. As I progress along I will be buying my own FDM 3D printer. I do know how to create 3D models in programs like Fusion360, though I still have so much to learn there. I'm liking how my 3D printed parts are turning out so far (most are ABS right now), though I'm still in the cleaning/finishing stages with them. I have a bunch of different 3D printed sprues, gates, spin traps, etc printed along with some things like the aluminum ingots. Mostly so far it's just easy to cast things that I can actually use. My favorite is the Pergo Cope & Drag Alignment pieces (free file download here). My plan is to cast these ones out of cast iron, that way if I spill something hotter than aluminum I don't melt them off the mold box or weld them shut, lol.

I absolutely plan on getting into lost wax casting down the road. I'll want to get a kiln first, and that's going to be something I won't have the space or money for for a while. But it is in the plan for the future.

You're right, I might be surprised at the detail Petrobond can reproduce...in fact, I expect I will be absolutely surprised, lol. I have Teton-Part Foundry Parting Powder (Non-Silica) as my parting powder and I guess we'll see how well it works between the Petrobond and a piece of leather. I'll probably just carve up a scrap piece of leather just to try casting so it won't matter in the experiment if the leather is somehow stained or damaged.


These are the 3D printed Pergo Cope & Drag Alignment pins that I'd like to cast from iron.


These are the 3D printed aluminum ingots, which I intend to use in a sand mold to cast multiple ingots at the same time with a consistent shape, size, and weight.


This is my Sprue Kit from PLM Foundry Supplies. I have, or soon will have other sprue, gate, spin trap, etc parts to add to the collection if for no other reason than having options.

 

Science!

The flask alignment pins look interesting, they appear to be 'use as is' on a flask versus ready-to-use patterns for casting. I may try a set, thanks for the link!

The ingot molds, you'll have to see how they pull from the sand. By design I would add bigger fillets to the corners and taper and fillet the text.
Sometimes a 3D printed pattern can be sanded and/or smoothed by adding paint and/or filler materials like epoxy, Bondo, or spot glazing putty. I do PLA so not sure which of these is best for ABS. You could also go after an ingot mold with wood and sanding. Pic below is not compensated for shrink but is right at 1# as it sits with the text at .040" deep.

 

To be honest, I think you are right that the flask alignment pins were probably designed to be printed and used as-is vs for casting. They are going to be a small challenge to cast because I'm going to have to figure out how to make a sand core to create the hole/depression on the one side of the set. I'm unconcerned with the mounting holes as I can drill those with a drill press after casting. I plan on casting them in aluminum until I get them right, by which point I hope to be more prepared to attempt casting them from iron.

With the ingot molds I plan to use some filler (probably bondo) along with a bunch of sanding. I've also considered using solvent to do a vapor bath which supposedly works well with ABS (though, I haven't done this before). You make a good point about the hard edges and I might round those out in the finishing process. Will the finished cavity hold exactly one pound of aluminum? I have no idea but we're going to find out.

 

If you change the physical material of the body you are interested in to aluminum (or whichever metal you are using) in Fusion360, you can view its properties and get a direct read on volume and weight.

 

I haven't had access to Fusion 360 in about two years now, as my student copy has finally expired. I recently found out they apparently have a "free" version for hobbyists? Have to look into that. The 3D prints I currently have are from free files online (other than the sprue set from PLM Foundry Supplies). I'll gladly rework a number of the files with metal casting specifically in mind once I have a copy of Fusion 360 again.

 

Last I looked, there is a free version and there is a startup version of Fusion360 which has more features. It was not hard to apply for the startup version.

@Melterskelter (Denis) does really nice work in Onshape, that is also an option. There is also FreeCAD which is powerful but less intuitive.

PS I forgot, I think @Al2O3 (Kelly) uses Alibre for CAD and does great work too.

 

Thank you for the suggestion of OnShape and Alibre! I am looking into those. I'm comparing what the options are for free/affordable CAD programs because I really do want to get back to drafting my own.

In other news, I'm planning on heading out to the local hardware store this week to pick up the parts to build a propane manifold for my foundry so I can pipe in the propane from a safe distance, and so I can also have an easy connect/disconnect from the propane, emergency shut off, etc. I just have the two furnaces so I'm building a very simple manifold from black iron pipe and brass fittings.

 

I run Onshape for CAD as it is free if you don't mind having your work being visible to all users and if you are going to gross under a certain dollar amount annually in your "business." I could have chosen from several free systems including Fusion 360. The main deciding factor for me was that I had a person volunteer to mentor me in Onshape. That kind of assistance is invaluable to me as it is inevitable that a I will run into certain software brick walls---having someone I can email for advice after trying to figure things out and doing a search has been super helpful. I suspect that any of the major platforms offer comparable capability and learning challenges.

With respect to your work being public on Onshape: if you wanted to be really cagey you could title your work in "code" to make it difficult to find in a general search by others. In other words, when I recently made up some custom refrigerator magnets, rather than title the work "Refrigerator Magnet," I could have called it "ASDFGH225" and then keep a list of my code names in a cross-reference list. Anyone searching on Refrigerator Magnet would never see my non-sense name. That is way too much trouble for me. And if someone wants to copy my design, I am happy for them. Here is a pic ;-) The magnet is printed inside the PETG fully enclosed---no black marks from the magnet on the fridge. Whimsical, ya. But fun too.



Denis

 

Thank you for the info on OnShape. I'm thinking I'm going to give OnShape a try since it's free. If it's similar to Fusion360 I think I'll get the basics easy enough. I never was an advanced CAD user, lol. But I'm looking forward to getting better at it.