Transcript:
Hey, everyone, Doug. Here at the jewelry monk studio getting ready to do some casting. And I just wanted to walk through what I do. Um, this particular casting is going to be in resin, So I’ve got a 3d printer and I printed up a couple of pieces that I’m going to cast, and I’m just going to kind of go through. Uh, walk you through what I do to get. Um, successful resin casting. So first thing I I’m just gonna dive in. You know, I’ve got some pieces here. I haven’t even clipped off the, uh, supports yet, So I’ll I’ll do that and just kind of walk you through what I do, so I’m gonna move this camera here So first thing I do. Is I clip off the the supports on the piece? So this resin is a b9’s emerald resin? I have pretty good success with it and you can go in and kind of snap. These supports off. I don’t like to do that because usually what I find is. If I snap them off, it leaves a small little divot in the the piece itself that I have to go in and either fill in with wax or repair, So so what I’m doing now is. Just I got my my semi flush cutters and I’m just kind of going in and just just snapping off or clipping off the little pieces, lets. See if I can show a little bit better. How I do that again. I just put that right up right up in there and you can see that, and then I’m just kind of clipping those off [Music] and again I I’d rather clip them off than snap them off, because if I snap them off, then I I get little little divots in my piece that I have to go in and repair so usually what I’ll do is. I’ll clip off a number of them about half of them, and then just kind of trim away the, uh, the base, just so that it’s out of the way one more sitting right there, so you can see kind of getting. There got a few more to clip off. So there you go. There’s a one more clip and comes off so now I got all these little little nubs there and I can actually go in and and sand them off in the resin before casting on this piece. What, I think I’m going to do is just leave them on there. And when I after I get it in casting, I got a little bit of cleanup to do on it anyway. So I’ll just leave those there and then I’ll finish them up, cleaning them up once I get it in the metal. So now what I will do is, uh, add a sprue to it. So what I’m going to use on the sprue is? This is a red! Um, what they call it? It’s a Ferrous round sprue. I’ve got a couple of them. One of them is 8 gauge and one of them is 10 gauge. I think on this one. I’m going to use 10 gauge now. The the wax itself. Let me back up a little bit here. The wax itself. It doesn’t stick really well to the resin. So what I do is I use. This is, uh, some sticky wax, and it’s actually, uh, pro craft sticky wax that I use when you open it up. It looks like those and it. This stuff is neat, so I’ll turn on my. I got my wax pen over here. Turn that on and what I will do is add the sticky wax to the resin because the sticky wax is appropriately named sticky wax Because it’s very sticky. Whatever you, uh, touch it to. It turns kind of sticky. So on this piece, I’m actually going to sprue it in three different areas just because with resin. You want to kind of almost over sprue it so you can see. I got one there one there and then one on the top I’m going to do is take take this sprue. I’m just gonna bend that there. Heat that up and drop it right there and a little bit of wax to that and a little wax to the other side. Take this and remove that there. I’m just modifying a sprue right now for this piece. [MUSIC] Now you can see. I’ve got the sprue onto the piece in three different areas. Now I’m going to take the larger eight gauge sprue wire and attach it to the the bottom, just so it has a little bit larger feed coming in and just right there just didn’t take much now. I’m gonna cut this off and then this is a blue inlay wax. I’m just going to go around the seams just to make sure that there’s no gaps in the the unions around there. There we go, that’s screwed up ready for casting. So I’ve got another piece here. This is just a small piece that I’m going to throw in there as well again. The sticky wax to the piece so that the sprue itself has something to stick to just like that. I’ve got a couple of these that I’m gonna cast turn that over again. The sticky wax is just acts as a a better way for the wax because the the regular sprue wax doesn’t stick to the resin as well and I don’t want the piece to break off during investing. Um, so the sticky wax just helps that from, uh, from happening all right now. I got the pieces screwed up. I actually got two of them that I’m gonna do two of those and two of the little ones. This is my, um, flask base. It is a two inch by, uh. I think the flask itself is two and a half inches. I don’t, I’m not using my perforated flask. This is just a small cast, so I’m going to use my vacuum casting, so I’m just going to add the pieces to the to the this. The, uh, the base here. Just take that put that there. I got the two small ones. I’m going to put in the middle and then the two larger ones. I’m going to put around the outside. Make sure there’s no gaps or voids around the union. I’ll take take this one. I’m going to mount that one right in there. Make sure the seam is doesn’t have any voids in it and then one more. The thing about this red wax is it. It takes a while to set once you heat it up. It’s still fairly soft, so you got to hold it in place for a little bit, All right, that’s what the tree is going to look like next thing I’m going to do is take it over to my scale and weigh it, so I know how much metal to use you can see. The base weight is 48 grams, so we’ll go over to the scale, make sure it’s at zero and 49.9 grams. So the difference is 1.9 grams, and then we’ll figure out how much metal that is, okay. The next thing I’m going to do is put the the flask around the piece down in there. Make sure it’s not touching the walls, which is good and then what I like to do is I’ve got these little straws and I’ve sealed up one end of them with wax and what I do is ill. Run the straws fairly close to the design. I mean, I don’t want it touching, but I want it close enough to where it’s going to add a little bit of vacuum draw and help these pieces to fill. So if you can imagine after these, this is invested when this burns out, that’s going to be like a little channel of air or channel of, um, one more here there. We go, it’s going to be like a a channel. The the air is going to be vacuumed and pulling closer to the piece to help it fill. So this is something that I’ve always done and it worked well for me. All right to mix my investment. I’ve got 91 ccs of water and eight ounces of investment. It’s a fairly small flask, so I don’t need a whole bunch and it’s so small that I’m not even really going to use my mixer. I’m just going to mix by hand. The water that I’m using is a mixture of powdered boric acid and water, and this is a one quart container and I mix in two tablespoons of powdered boric acid. I do is I heat up the water. Mix in the the, uh, the boric acid. And then it dissolves, And then I let that sit, um, room temperature, and whenever I use it, that’s, uh, it’s ready to go, so that’s the the mixture that I use and you can see. It’s not a whole bunch. Just gonna add the water, and then I’m going to add the powder, but for for doing that, I’m going to do that off camera because I wear a respirator and you can’t hear me talk anyway. So [Music] [Music] [Music] all right now? What I do is, uh, take the little pins that are holding the straws out. Take the the base off and then I I got a little scraper and what I usually do is scrape off the excess. Uh, investment just makes for a little cleaner flask. But what’s really important on these? Is this edge here? You want to make sure that there’s no investment on that top edge because that’s going to make contact with the the casting rubber seal. And you just don’t want anything in there. That’s going to impede that there. We go ready to go in the oven on this one. I’m actually going to do a 12-hour burnout. Uh, it is the the suggested burnout from b9 um, but I’ve also run five hour six hour burnouts and have the same results. So, um, yeah, so I’ll put this in the oven and, uh, show you the results tomorrow. [MUSIC] SO [Music] [Music] [Music], uh, um, [Music] so there you go, there’s a quick overview of how I go about casting my resin pieces. Uh, a few closing comments first. Um, in in my jewelry. There’s really no absolutes. You’re going to run across people who say you need to do this. You have to do that. You can’t get by without doing it experiment. A little bit play around. Here’s some examples of some of the pieces that I’ve cast lately, and I’ve tried different things on all of them. The majority of these I didn’t even use the boric water. I just used the straight ultravest or satin cast. Whatever I had available and still having pretty good results, so play around. I know the majority of people who run across this video are probably, um, looking for some quick answers because they’ve tried a few things and they haven’t worked. So hopefully as I walk through some of these things, It gives you some ideas. This is how I go about it now. And I have really good results here lately. So, um, try around and experiment. Uh, what I like to do is whenever I cast or print some pieces. I always print one or two extra. Whenever I’m doing a regular cast, Ill I’ll throw one in there, You know, and try different things with it, especially if I’m doing silver or something like that so that it’s rather inexpensive to experiment, but try things, because if if you run a resin piece with wax, it’s not going to harm the wax. It’s kind of its its own little subject, so it doesn’t bleed into the rest of the cast, so there’s nothing there’s nothing that you can do. That’s going to harm the other pieces, so play around second thing. One thing that is very important is the curing. Here’s a picture of my printer and the curing box that I use. I’ve tried a number of different things from boiling them in in water and oil in a microwave to glycerin to, I’ve even taken and put them in glass beakers and and put them in direct sunlight for a few hours just to make sure that they’re cured so, um, but the curing is critical. Um, there’s a number of different resins out there. Check with the manufacturer to see what they suggest, but make sure that your pieces are completely cured, because if not, that will have a bad effect on the surface of your pieces as well so, um, curing is critical and the last thing is is. Hopefully this helped you out, and if it did share it, you know, share it with some of your casting friends. Check out all the multimedia things. Just look for jewelry, monk. Or if you have more questions, you can get a hold of me at jewelrymonkcom or my consulting page, which is Doug Napiercom. That’s n-a-p-i-e-r and I’d be happy to help or walk you through things or or if anything, if you’re in critical need, I can, actually, you know. Sometimes I’ll go to different places and and work with them. Walk them through some different processes, so thanks for spending 20 minutes of your life that you’re never going to get back with me. Hopefully this helped. If it does leave a comment. Uh, tell me tell me how it helped. And and hopefully it did so again. This is how I go about. It and I have pretty good success, so thanks for stopping by and check out jewelrymunkcom and dougnapiercom.