A cost effective approach to production of investment casting wax models by additive manufacturing

Production of precise cast parts is often be accomplished by investment casting process. Within this process molten metal is poured into molds produced around wax models of the final part. In this process models and molds, which may be costly or time consuming to create, can be used one time only.

Investment casting is well established process in production of metal castings with complex or thin walled shapes or patterns. In this paper application of desktop size 3D printer for production of wax models is presented as fast and low-cost method of model production. The goal of this investigation was to test the possibility of the use of open source printer and software for wax pattern manufacturing for educational and training purposes. The use of a 3D printer allows rapid production of a part from a CAD image as well as the ability to create many copies of the same wax model. The surface quality of models was analyzed regarding to print parameters (layer thickness vs time) and some of typical wax models’ defects and reparation method are shown.