On Sun, 2 Apr 2023 at 18:30, hubert <h...@hbahr.org> wrote: I would appreciate recommendations on sources of custom castings.
It's helpful to be able to make your own patterns. Castings are cheap (I pay about £10 / kg for one-offs) but pattern-making is expensive. However, 3D-printing has made pattern making very much easier (especially loose pieces and odd-sides) As an example of an odd-side, the red part here is the part pattern, the blue is a an odd-side, something that it is cradled in during the ramming of the first half of the mould. Very difficult to make traditionally, a few minutes to design and send to the printer in CAD. Though, you can always make the patterns the traditional way, in wood. Here is a very fancy pattern made by a friend of mine: https://hmvf.co.uk/topic/9672-ww1-thornycroft-restoration/?do=findComment&comment=496232 The fun part is learning to think in terms of casting metal _and_ "casting air" Once you have a pattern, then in the UK I use AJD, but in the US the name that keeps coming up is "WIndy Hill" https://windyhillfoundry.com but it's probably worth ringing around. If the foundry is doing manual sand casting then there is really no economy of scale, so a one-off costs pretty much the same per part as thousands. (And is a little less boring for the moulder) -- atp "A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and lunatics." — George Fitch, Atlanta Constitution Newspaper, 1912 _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
