Printing in wax for lost-wax casting  

Re: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Hmm... I haven't been at this long, but I don't think you can print wax. You could certainly try with some of the polymers like PLA and melt them out or ABS and dissolve it out. I briefly looked into this before and did come across the following link which you also might find interesting:

https://www.makergear.com/blogs/stories/casting-metal-parts

If, in the future, you come up with a good technique for doing this, please be sure to share as I think many people would be interested.

Re: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Maybe soluble support material could be used for this purpose?

Re: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

I've never tried it, but here's a special filament made for this purpose.

https://www.machinablewax.com/product.php?product=52

There are probably others, I found this by googling "lost wax fdm".

Re: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

I've never tried it, but here's a special filament made for this purpose.

https://www.machinablewax.com/product.php?product=52

There are probably others, I found this by googling "lost wax fdm".

Thank you for the link. The Makergear people used Moldlay filament which is similar. They made a good effort, but I don't think their overall results were that good. I suspect that the actual casting process itself takes a good bit of skill even though many people do it.

To that end, if anyone happens to have a concise summary or "recipe" book for how this can be done by the home hobbyist with access to basic equipment, please give a link. Many good plastics are available for printing, but sometimes they're just not enough.

Re: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Did you figure this out yet? I just got wax filament today. It says something about adjusting the tension on the extruder.

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

How did it go??? I'm interested in trying

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Hello! I'm completely new to the forum so I'm sorry for beginners errors in advance 🙂 

I'm trying to print Mouldlay (wax-alike filament). Have you tried it? I have serious problems to print it out... I have the temperatures and all the other settings done, but it continues to kinda get glued back to the nozzle, so the nozzle getter the material on it self - so no print at all..... It never happened to me before with other materials... I double check everything and I'm getting really hopeless :/

It seems you guys tried a lot about wax filaments, you might have an advance for a nube?

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

@prodavacmelounu

OK, I've never printed with mouldlay; I do print sacrificial mould moulds but that's another technique.

However, blobbing back onto the extruder is, on a properly set-up printer, almost always due to poor print-bed adhesion.  The next commonest cause is an incorrect live Z setting, you can eliminate that if other prints are OK.

Cheerio,

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Sorry for misspelling and thank you for your reply

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

Posted by: @kenneth-b9

I just ordered an i3 MK2S printer (kit) and want to use it to print wax objects that will then be used in lost-wax casting. Are there any guidelines for doing this on Prusa printers?

Maybe you could try  Polycast

RE: Printing in wax for lost-wax casting

These wax's print at low temperatures, the Prusa Mk3's  have a low temperature safety that stops the extruder trying to run, below 170C

the info I saw for the wax filament showed a print temperature of 140C...   

to make this work, you will need a code in your start Gcode.... 

Unfortunately My Laptop died last week, so I will have to have a dig around! 

Try adding M302 S120 in your Custom Gcode  start Gcode, in the filament section on Prusa Slicer....   this will temporarily lower the low temperature extrusion threshold to 120C which should let the filament extrude at 130 to 140C...    

I hope this helps, 
regards Joan