Casting Jewelry with Maker Juice Labs WaxCast Resin and the Elegoo Mars 3D Printer

hey everyone this is josiah with grace note forge so i wanted to do a follow-up video to show how i go about casting my pieces with maker juice castable resin and as i've stated before i'm not affiliated with maker juice in any way but i just wanted to show my process with using this resin to cast jewelry i'm going to be casting this heart charm design that i made in blender and if you're interested in seeing how i went about designing this you can check that out in this previous video so for whatever reason in the past when i've tried to print with this resin i've had some difficulty with having wax actually stick to the piece which is needed in order to attach sprues for casting so just to make my life a little bit easier i'm actually going to be modeling the sprues along with the piece and you can see me doing that using the same curve profile editor as i used in order to actually make the charm itself and with these sprues i'm kind of going through and really really over engineering what's needed in order to cast this piece but i wanted to make sure that i have a smooth transition for the flow of metal and have the sprue attach in areas that are really easy to clean up after casting and once i have the sprues in place i'm just going to go through and convert them to mesh in order to combine them with the charm itself and i'm actually going through with the sculpting tools in blender to just adjust the parts of the mesh that are connecting with the charm and this is just done to make sure that the flow of the molten metal doesn't get interrupted by any sharp edges during casting and you can see that i'm just kind of going back and forth with the deform brush in blender to kind of push the ends of the sprue to where they're mostly connected to the part of the curve and then extending the sides out so that this area doesn't become too narrow for when the metal flows into the charm so now i'm just going to go through and do the same process for the decorative bail and you can see that i actually modeled up a quick example of the rubber sprue base and this is just to get an idea of how i'm going to orient the pieces in the flask when i go to attach them to the sprue base [Music] and just like before after i convert these pieces to a mesh i'm just going to go through with the sculpting tools and adjust where they're connected to the piece just to make it easier for cleanup i don't want the sprues to connect to the face of where our decorative pattern is and this will just make it easier for when we go to cut these sprues off and finish up the piece [Music] so here's the finished pieces actually sitting in the rubber sprue base and obviously this step isn't needed but it's just a good representation of how i'm going to orient the pieces in the flask when i go to pour the investment i'm gonna try printing a few of these charms some are in a couple of different sizes and some are without the sprues themselves and this is just to kind of experiment with printing and with casting these pieces and i'm going to be printing these pieces using the lego mars and the chi 2 box slicing software and i'm using the same print settings that i used in my review video for maker juice wax cast resin if you want to check that out the link is in the description and to be honest i don't use this resin too often in my experience it tends to be hit or miss on achieving a successful print which seems to be the case for a lot of other people as well and because the exposure time between layers needs to be so long there's more of a chance of damaging the lcd panel on the printer so if you do plan on trying this resin just keep that in mind [Music] once they're done printing i can remove the build plate and take the prints off and start to clean them up and i'm just going to clean these prints off using an inexpensive ultrasonic cleaner i'm going to put the prints in a thin plastic cup and this is just to avoid having to fill the entire vat with cleaning solution this does a pretty good job of removing the uncured resin so most of these prints ended up having issues and i was only able to get one successful print with the sprues attached and even printing with heavy supports a lot of the supports separated from the prints and in some areas of the prints it was barely attached at all some of these issues might be due to the fact that this resin is very flexible and most of these prints are decently thin most of the bales seem to have printed just fine and i'm sure this is something that can be fixed by just tweaking the support settings but for now i'm just gonna cure the prints that can be salvaged after removing the supports they're placed in a homemade uv curing station and like i mentioned in my review video something that i really like about this resin is being able to see the color difference between the cured and uncured resin once the pieces are cured i can add some wax to my rubber base in order to attach the prints [Music] now the metal flask can be placed into the rubber base and you can see that it looks really similar to our 3d model that we made earlier once that's secure we can begin to pour our investment into the flask and after the investment is cured and the rubber base is removed i'm just going to go around the bottom end of the flask and clean up some of this investment and this is because i'm using a vacuum table for casting and i want to make sure it has a good seal around the rubber gasket as i mentioned in my review video maker juice provides a recommended burnout cycle for this resin but i haven't personally had great success with these burnout instructions and it might be because my investment is different than what they recommend but i've changed my burnout cycle to run at a higher max temperature and this is because i had some castings that looked like there was ash that was left over from the resin that wasn't fully vaporized during the burnout and a higher temperature might help fully eliminate the leftover ash residue i'm going to be casting with sterling silver that's a 50 50 mix of new and recycled casting grain and this is recommended for most castings because new casting grain has additives that make silver flow more easily that will burn out after casting the flask has been left to sit for a few minutes it's quenched in water and the residual heat breaks apart the investment and the cast can be retrieved and here's the raw casting some of the layers from printing are visible which might be able to be fixed by changing the layer height settings but they should clean up just fine most of it came out pretty clean but there are a few spots that look a little rough and there's a lot of things that could cause this it could be from leftover ash residue that wasn't fully evacuated from the mold or from many other problems like the temperature of the flask rising too fast during burnout you can also see that the thin end of the bale has some imperfections as well and it looks like the silver was starting to solidify before it was fully able to fill that area and for me at least each new casting comes with some trial and error to figure out the correct method of casting after a bath in some warm pickling solution the dark fire scale is cleaned off and we can start to remove the sprues and clean up the piece using a fine jeweler saw i'm just going to saw off the ends of the sprues making sure not to get too close to the surface [Music] the remaining ends of the sprues are then filed away using needle files taking added care to follow the contours of the piece and smooth out the surface i then blended out the remaining surface imperfections and the visible layers left over from printing with various silicone abrasive wheels this step probably would have been easier if i had taken the time to sand down the surface of the resin pieces after they had cured but i honestly just forgot to do it so don't make the same mistake i did i took a thin strip of fine sandpaper to clean up some of the hard to reach areas and filed away the sprue marks on the bail in the same way that i did with the heart charm so because the bail needs to be cut open in order to loop the charm through i decided to cut through the thin area of the bale that has the imperfection left over from casting i can then open up the ends of the bale and loop the charm through and then close it up as tight as i can get it in order to solder it back [Music] together i'm going to add a decent amount of silver solder to reseal the bale and fill any small imperfections in that area that weren't able to be filed away the solder joint can then be cleaned up with some files and fine abrasives and then the charm and bale can be polished up and placed into an ultrasonic bath to clean up the remaining polishing compound and here's the finished piece let me know what you think and if you have any experience with casting and have some tips on how to get some good resin casts leave them down in the comments thanks for watching

Channel: Grace Note Forge

Views: 1,313

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: castable resin, elegoo mars, resin, 3d print, casting, printer settings, 3D printer, home casting, Maker, Maker Juice, WaxCast, waxcast resin, elegoo mars settings, castable, review, metal, casts, blucast, lost wax, casting jewelry, Maker Juice Labs, 3D printed necklace, heart necklace, casting silver, casting resin, vacuum table, blender jewelry, Grace Note Forge

Id: AkmqBBBVA0c

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021