ART CASTING WITH BRASS, BRONZE AND IRON

The Brass Workshop offers its sophisticated customers elegant pieces of art cast with brass, bronze, iron or aluminum. We use the lost wax casting process, also known as the investment casting process. Here are the chief benefits of this process of art casting with brass, bronze, iron and aluminum:

 

1. No feather edges on the cast thanks to the use of a one-piece mold.
2. Casting can produce complex shapes.
3. You get a clean surface that requires no follow-up machining.
4. The molding frames are quite affordable.
5. Several items can fit into a single frame herringbone style, attached to a shared gate and feed system.
6. Items cost less to produce.
7. Cast iron items have no carbide formations, which shortens the follow-up thermal treatment process (annealing).
8. Relatively large casts can be produced.
9. Due to its high accuracy, the process requires only a minimal allowance where the surfaces require extra fine precision, or none at all where the art object will tolerate minuscule imprecision.

Casters’ Art Design Process

 

The artist or designer of cast art objects will make a large number of drawings and sketches, developing the details until the design reaches its final shape. The sculptor will carve the object from wax or another low-melting material by hand.

With the drawings, the designer at the Brass Workshop will create a three-dimensional model of the future cast artwork using a 3D CAD system.

The 3D model can now be printed on a 3D printer to be subsequently used in the casting of the investment mold.

The use of a 3D printer achieves much better quality and accuracy compared to crafting the low-melting model manually. Moreover, the model can be altered, adjusted, and tweaked in any manner. The design process is fully automated, resulting in much shorter frame manufacturing and preproduction lead times. Plus the model can be reused any number of times.

Stages of the art casting process at the Brass Workshop: lost wax casting with brass, bronze, iron or aluminum

1. A model of the future artwork and its gate and feed system are created from low-melting materials such as wax or paraffin.
2. The resulting low-melting model is covered with several coats of suspension and stucco. As they dry they will form a fire resistant shell.
3. The low-melting model is cast out of its shell while the shell never melts and remains intact. The result is a hollow mold, into which the molten alloy will be poured via the gate and feed system. The inside of the form is an exact replica of the artwork.
4. The mold is fitted into a one-piece frame and hardened by baking.
5. Molten alloy is poured into the mold. It is important to do this procedure right to avoid imperfections. Defects may include hollows, short runs, cold laps, scorched parts, and so on. Special ladles are used for the pouring.
6. The mold cools down.
7. The mold is cracked open with a hammer, and the cast art object is extracted with pincers.
8. The gate and feed system is severed, and the cast is cleaned of imperfections such as flashes and heads. The object then receives any surface treatment necessary such as milling, polishing, or stamping. Where this is required, the object will be polished with felt, leather, or impregnated fabric.
9. The casts are assembled to form a single composition, if the artwork consists of several parts. The cast artwork is now ready to be delivered to customer.