Professional Lost Wax Casting From Start To Finish

hi welcome to the online jewelry Academy I'm Professor John R and I'm your instructor today we're at Montecristo trade corp in the heart of the jewellery district of downtown Los Angeles and I'm here with Alice and she's going to talk to us today about lost wax casting Alice what are some of the things that I need to think about before I bring you my items for casting well don't you don't have to worry about that because we have done that so many times and we guide our clients to the entire process the first thing probably will ask you is what if you bring us even a CAD design or the debris much away well I didn't bring you a CAD design but I brought you a wax oh ok so and the second thing I have to ask you how many rings do you want us to make one or 10,000 oh wow well I just need one today but if I was going to ask for multiples how would you guys handle that well we usually do mo okay I have a beautiful example here it's knowing the Buddha schedule so we have involved here and we had a flat figure and have a finished product oh wow run okay so you're just going to make a mold of it and make multiples and cast and that's cool now what are my choices in terms of alloys I see you've got some laid out on the table yeah here we have a gold alloys for rose gold yellow gold and white gold what's this Ellen there's not an alloy actually this is a pure gold oh so that's the 24 karat yeah now can I get these alloys at any carrots that I want or so so 10 14 18 20 all of them all of them cool now it looks like you've got dog bowls full of gold here since I go this is telling silver Ella's oh okay they look they're both sterling silver a boss telling a lot okay is there a reason for the two different colors in depends of how do you make vampire copper zinc and zinc aliyou oh okay so they're different types of objects different sizes got it so I see you've got a pair of boots over here what's going on with that well actually we don't do always a jewelry we can make any types of castings for example we have something for shoes and for bags any types of accessories so it seems like you guys can do any type of accessory from jewelry to handbags shoes and even some small sculptural ends that's fantastic so how do we get the process started with my ring okay I'll give it to our professional and hello with this perimetry okay cool janitor Michael and he'll help us Michael don't want us to characters and silver to have any approach people you can edit yes so Michael you're just going to add a piece of wax to the end of it and then put it on the tree in front of you cool so John now you can see how we did here he's using really high temperature Gregg Christian and he has to melt the wax and furthering on his pottery so he's using the wax pen to attach the sprue to the model and then attaching that sprues other end to the base of the top of the tree exactly cool about how many pieces are honest fruit tree well it depends on the size of the pieces so each poetry has has to have the same size pieces on it it's kind of Airy so all of these are models that have been produced through wax injection great exactly so that's how we get to ten thousand if we wanted at ten thousand yeah excellent cool my ring is on the screw tree now and you've got all these other clients pieces on different screw trees but I understand that Montecristo does original wax carving as well is it possible to take a look at that pressure let me say yeah okay so now here we are in our last curving and designing Department where we have our expert carver and designer the granite extent who has designed a lot of stitches for us how many pieces are in the Monte Cristo catalog well we have more than 15,000 designs Wow and how many has tigran designs more than 2,000 oh my gosh and these are available to retailers to the general public exactly and they can purchase them in any type of metal yes that's amazing set well this looks like it's a very complex process and there are a lot of tools on the registry to use yeah our designer has to use all of them to curl tiny little details of each design great so I'm sure that they're quite personalized in order to make it simply for him to work for sure that is great well thanks for showing that to us Alice you're welcome - what's next today I'm going to show you our casting Department okay okay Alice so we have our piece sprue - a sprue tree like this one on a sprue base now what happens to it next well let me have us proceed with design we have to put the ProStreet inside of the press I still look back with a less time to continue the casting process okay so this flask is covered with the like a cling wrap to close the holes up and I see it's got tape above the rim so that it can be overfilled or yeah it just in case the investments will mouth her out so it when you vacuum it if it comes it may bubble up out when the air bubbles are released from it okay so I'm familiar enough with casting to know that the investment is a dry material that you mix with water and you have a limited amount of time to do it right because it gets dry and dry its hardens up really fast okay so let's put the flask on to our sprue base so that Michael can invest the tree and cast it all right now each one of those flasks has a tree with wax models on them he has added the investment which is like a plaster of Paris only of heat-resistant and now he's mixing it up with a big industrial drill that's correct I see he's wearing a respirator and that's wise because I know it's not good to breathe this stuff in now that it's blended he's pouring it through a filter to ensure a consistent mix Michaels working very hard to get all of the mixture because he's measured precise amounts that are needed to fill all of the flat he's putting a big dome over it why is he doing that Alice that is to make him out any air bubbles the michael has been mixing the investment for about five minutes on the vacuum table once this is completed most of the air that's been trapped in the mixture from the mixing process will be removed next he'll remove the bucket from the vacuum table so he can use that surface to invest the individual flasks Michael is now carefully positioning each of the flasks onto the vacuum table with the tallest in the back and the shortest in the front this will allow him to eyeball exactly how much investment he pours into each one so that he can cover all of the models contained inside each flask that's right John and we have a lot of different flask sizes accommodate bigger or smaller castings so he put the vacuum dome back on and he's also bouncing the table with his hand that way he ensured that any air bubbles are released Alice what would happen if some of the air bubbles were left in some of the air bubbles might speak to the mono and ruin their surface so he will actually do this for about five minutes so he's setting them off to the side how long will he leave them there before he can put them in the kiln they have to completely hardened full check back on him when he's ready to love the kill now he'll load them into the kiln so the wax can melt out leaving a void for the metal to be poured into how hot does the kiln get well the web smells and burns away attaboys 500 degrees Fahrenheit so it looks like Michael finished doing the investment and I guess it's very loaded in the kiln yeah he quit already wild plastic for the kiln okay so it takes about how long for it to burn out in the textile hours so we can let it basically burn out overnight and then come back and see what we have okay cool all right well I guess it's time to go home let's go we put the flask into the burnout kiln behind me about 12 hours ago right exactly okay so it's had a chance to basically melt out or burn out all the wax inside of that yeah it's left yes then what happened then after our cast hotels with Nick following morning he turned on the induction testing machine puts inside the meadows who wants to piss in okay and this time we're going to cashed in silver yes so when Michael casts these molds he's actually doing the alloying process at the same time absolutely and it's a vacuum casting machine correct exactly so that means that that that the vacuum is going to suck all of the air out of the flask and give the metal its best possible chance to reach every little tiny spot inside of that empty void right yes that's how it works okay cool so I guess we should stand back and let your caster get busy right yeah okay now he's getting a flag from the kill part of the process is that the flesh must be hot when the molten metal is poured into them why is that if the quest aren't hot they might accept the molten metal it's pretty interesting how this machine automates the casting process once the flask is received by the vacuum unit Michael can line it up with an induction furnace so that the metal flows freely into the flask he will calibrate this and make sure that all of the material is ejected from the crucible by looking through the court full of the machines and making sure is that the flask is possibly tapped Michael is opening the unit and the molten metal has already been deposited now that the cast is complete you can look into the top of the flask and see how hot and mentally notice that the screw button is glowing with heat he's taking the flask across the room where it will cool off Alice how long does it have to cool off before he can break the mold takes about 20 minutes so John it's already 20 minutes have and now we have our test done or we have to do now is to break the investment and then after that put into the washing machine to remove out of there and after that we will go and cut the strip okay great so we'll get a chance to see it between steps and yes Michael is putting the flask is irritating unit that is a high water pressure to start investment removal process boy a good thing that Michael shut the lid on that thing otherwise we'd all be sopping wet now he's removing it from the flask it looks like a blob Michael can you show us what it looks like now oh I don't know now wow it's hot and it's heavy now we have to work it out okay can you give it back now he's putting it into another machine this one looks like something from a science fiction movie it has gloves protecting his hands and is completely contained so that the high water pressure doesn't hurt his hands or mess up the entire studio Wow so you hear cheering cool here what's next it has to be very aroused and then we have to cut the strip okay cool so how long should it pickle before we can cut off the screw it takes about signing minutes so now we have our beautiful treat done here which at first was made in yxs you remember and now it's silver and the second set we have to do is cut down the rings Michael can you help us cool so now the rings taken off the tree and I guess we need to file down the screw all the way and send it for finishing great so I guess we're off to finishing them now Alice where are we in the process so we know that's my Colchester link and he had this room so now we have our expert postal Christian who will put a sign on it okay great and I assume this is Christian hi nice to meet you so Christian I understand has already taken the ring through two other processes he did an abrasive process to remove the skin from casting and he's also used a bobbing compound to adjust and refine the surface and now we're getting ready to witness the final polishing plan work cool so you need good ventilation for this I can imagine that's right you don't want to breathe in any of this does well it's really quickly looking great obviously he is an expert Wow okay so I'm assuming that this is very hot since you handed it to me on it's out thank you so much Chris yeah that's great so this is kind of big and clunky but I understand that Montecristo can provide a variety of finishes and you can polish almost anything yeah we don't we polish different in different sizes and like here we you can feel those delicate pieces and also we do not only the hand polishing but also with your sunglass travel polishing and any type of polishing Wow it looks like you guys can do all kinds of detail work and get into every nook and cranny on these pieces this is beautiful these look like they're almost ready to go to the store exactly as at first it has to go to our color expert to check it and after that go to the store space wow that is great thank you for showing us this Alice now if you liked this video there are plenty more like it on the online jewelry Academy's youtube channel and web page you can visit our website at

Channel: OnlineJewelryAcademy

Views: 101,164

Rating: 4.7467666 out of 5

Keywords: John Ahr, making jewelry, jewelry making, online jewelry academy, on-line jewelry academy

Id: QjMtxh4iTmI

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2017