Recent Castings
The following are a few of the more interesting castings I have recently poured with a short description of each.
This is a 4.0L Ford V-6 supercharger manifold designed to fit an Eaton MP90 supercharger to the engine. These pictures are of the casting straight out of the sand. I dropped the casting just before this picture was taken and the riser on one end broke off and is not shown. The mottled surface on the top of the manifold is actually a stain in the aluminum caused by the residue from the foam pattern.
This casting was done as a lost foam pattern molded in petrobond sand. I used 319 Aluminum alloy for this casting and the results were good. These pictures were taken only a few minutes apart from the pictures above. I just cut all of the gates and risers off of the casting on my band saw and ran the part through the blast cabinet for a few minutes to clean it up. Otherwise, it is straight out of the mold and not too bad. Even though this casting was a success, I will probably build a permanent pattern out of MDF and pour future castings in the conventional manner. However, I will make one more experimental casting of this part using a loose sand mold and a pattern coated in thinned drywall mud. Should be fun.
My good friend Bill and I share a passion for all things metal. Bill is one of those fellow "thinker-types" and he and I can spend inordinate amounts of time spun off in discussion when left without adult supervision. Recently, he told me about a pattern he made of a horn cover for an Indian motorcycle that he wanted to try casting. One thing lead to another, and I carted his pattern home to give it a shot. The results weren't spectacular based mainly on the fact that I used too much parting dust and some of the facial details were lost. But with a little work, this casting could certainly make for a very nice and unique horn cover.
I poured this in 319 aluminum alloy and used a petrobond sand mold. In hindsight, this casting would have been better if I had done it in a sodium silicate bonded mold or, perhaps a lost wax casting using an RTV mold to make the wax pattern. I think if we were to ever do a gross of these castings, a match plate would be made and the mold would be made using sodium silicate bonded sand.