Hi guys, does anyone of you know, if polyamid12 is a useable material for lost foam casting? It's melting temperature is 180°C. I'm thinking of 3d printing my motorbine cylinder with HP Multijet printing and then simply cast it. What do you mean?
Though Polyamid 12 has a lower melting point than Polystyrene (217C), if its printed density is not less than 2lb/ft3, IMO it has little to no chance of being a viable lost foam pattern material. A search indicated a density of about 1gm/cm3 which is about the same density as polystyrene but that's little more than 62lb/ft3. LF Polystyrene foam pattern materials are typically 1-1.5lb/ft3. Unless it has a very effective foaming agent while being printed, I'd say there is no chance of PA12 being viable for the lost foam casting technique. It's possible it could be an acceptable base material as opposed to Polystyrene. The problem is more a matter of the need to introduce a foaming agent at the 3D print head that reduces printed density somewhere between 30:1 & 50:1 because this consequently causes the printed polymer to expand a similar amount which makes printing dimensional accuracy somewhere between impractical and impossible unless the expansion can be made to occur within the print head (so far noone has succeeded). Don't know about using it as an evaporative investment casting pattern material with burn out prior to casting.....but doubtful because the same searches compared it to Nylon (some called it Nylon 12) which is a poor choice for such. Best, Kelly
Okay... damn So than I'll use this 3d printing method for making the coreboxes for the sand core and the patterns for the sand molds
