33.9/34 Not Bad.

by John

It was a bit too warm for casting bronze today. 33ºc/91.4f. But I went ahead. It was sweaty.

I had installed a new thermocouple in the potters oven and it performed flawlessly. Fumes from burning out the PLA and wax from the mold had caused the older thermocouple to behave erratically, but the new stainless steel type was unaffected.

And, as I displayed yesterday, I had made a very ambitious tree with 32 parts to be cast, and a second tree with 2 largish parts.

No vents. No vacuuming of the melt. Just a straight pour.

A few minutes after the pour, the bronze is still at a beautiful fluorescent red heat.
The cast 2 trees. NO bubbles (I painted the PLA trees with a slurry of investment before the investment pour). All parts look perfect, except for a tiny area of moth eaten edge on one of the parts in the top tree. Too small to show up, and quite repairable.
The other side. Not much surface oxidation (phosphor copper used).

So, a very successful pour. Some careful hand sawing required to cut off the parts.