Any solution to the Wax printing of several copies of one model?

Discussion in 'Design and Modeling' started by Rick1633, Jul 22, 2016.

  1. Rick1633
    Rick1633 Member
    Hello everyone. I am a jewelry hobbyist and decided that I would make an anchor chain necklace by casting wax models of 12mmx7mm anchor chain segments. What I thought would be a very easy process because I can make the entire wax tree of 24 anchor chain models using Sketchup Pro....... has become a ridiculous brick wall.



    I don't own a wax printer so I thought I could easily outsource it.



    The ridiculous problem of 3d printing wax from what I have discovered is this......



    No one I have ever found whether it would be Shapeways or individuals will print an entire wax tree of these simple anchor chain pieces. (The bounding box is only 65mm high and even less wide). So the other issue is that if I were to try to order 24 copies of just the 12mmX7mm anchor chain links, I would have to pay a 10 to 35 dollar surcharge for each individual copy just for it being made of wax, then the cost by volume. So in other words........ 3d printing in wax is completely and utterly impossible for anything that you need more than one copy of. I find this extremely surprising for many reasons. For one..... If Shapeways or individuals are concerned the sprues will break during shipment... that is no problem because wax can be welded back together. Secondly.... wax printing has been around for a while now so I don't see why the material is so difficult to handle or print. Castable wax has a pretty high melting temp.



    Does anyone please have any ideas on how to efficiently order 24 copies of a small wax model?



    Thanks for any advice.

    Rick
     

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  2. EngineersOnDemandNow
    EngineersOnDemandNow Well-Known Member
    What problem are you encountering exactly? Can you not fit your tree into the bounding box? The Shapeways bounding box is 75mm by 75mm by 50mm, which is interesting, because I know that they print wax to cast silver products, and the bounding box on the silver products is 89x89x100mm. Maybe if you message them with this specific order they can find a way to do it for you cheaper, because you are correct in your assertion that there is no reason to pay that startup fee for every model.
     
  3. Rick1633
    Rick1633 Member
    The problem is that the model shows perfect green checkmarks for every material, including wax...

    But then when the printing technicians see my models the say hell no to printing it. Then..... when I politely email them saying that if the wax model breaks, they would break at the sprues and I can simply melt them back on... they say... "sorry sir, we cannot "print anyways" for this material".

    What the heck? Wax is the best material to "print anyways", because if the model breaks during shipping, you can melt/weld the model back together.

    I just found out about castable resin from FormLabs. It's cheaper to print if i can find a printer.
     
  4. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    What if you were to create a tree that looked nothing like what you want but that would make the technicians happy. Then dismantle the parts and melt/weld them to a more appropriate tree for your casting needs? Putting the parts in a plane on a ring or a flat bar might avoid 3D printing and shipping breakage problems. It might even save you some money overall depending on the pricing is calculated. It's a little more work but it might be worth looking at.
     
  5. stonysmith
    stonysmith Well-Known Member Moderator
    One thing you might not be taking into consideration is gravity. There might be enough weight there that the links break off when you set the tree down on a flat surface. Especially for Shapeways to print things, they have to take into consideration the rough-handedness of the shipping vendors.
    Have you emailed customer service asking for a better explanation of "What breaks?"
     
  6. Rick1633
    Rick1633 Member
    This is a good idea for getting shapeways to print wax. But I can't think of a way to connect them. The bounding box is 70mm. Each link is 12mm and I need at least 24 of them. A flat X shape? But my gut tells me the sprues will still be a weakness no matter what angle. And a thicker sprue will be overkill on weight and metal.
     
  7. Rick1633
    Rick1633 Member
    Thanks. They circle my sprues that go to the links. I think I will try castasble resin before changing my well designed sprue shapes.
     
  8. MrNibbles
    MrNibbles Well-Known Member
    In this method you might not be able to print all 24 in one shot. Maybe 12 twice or 8 three times, which should be cheaper than 24 individual prints. But there would still be the hassle of assembling the tree you want. This was just a suggestion if the shape of the tree itself is subject to breakage during processing or shipping.