I love a good piece of hand poured silver and there are a few Artisans in and around the Silver Gold Stackers Community here on Hive who produce some sexy silver pours on the regular, however today I came across an artisan in Australia who has blown my mind with the work he produces. He uses a technique called Lost Resin Casting and it’s something I hadn’t really looked into before.
Source
Basically you use a 3D printer to print an object out of resin and then create an Investment Cast with it. The resin is burnt out of the cast as it is cured in a kiln and then the silver is poured into the void of the cast with a vacuum on the plaster to ensure the void is filled. After the metal cools the cast is broken and the metal piece can be trimmed, polished and finished off.
It sounds like a bit of work and it does mean that there is only ever one pour per cast, but the results look spectacular. I’d like to share some pictures but probably should get permission to do so first...and I should try to add some to my stack too! The artisan I’m talking about is called Smithys Bullion and he seems to be fairly active and proliferate with his pours.
Does anyone else here in SGS have experience with doing Lost Resin Casting? I was always of the impression that moulds were made to be re-used or that artisans used sand for casting one-off pours but this Lost Resin Casting looks seriously next level to me. If you want to learn more about this method for pouring silver, I found this great video that explains and demonstrates the whole process.
I used to run a jewelry manufacturing business in the late ’80s and owned all the equipment needed for casting, but nowadays I don’t use it much due to lack of time. I recently got a 3D printer and have made many models with it. Having this technology back in my jewelry-making days would have simplified a lot of processes.
One key task in my old business was making rubber molds for wax casting. This involved wrapping sheets of unvulcanized rubber around a metal object—like a ring or a chess piece—to copy it in metal. The rubber was then heated in a press to vulcanize, or cure it. After the rubber hardened, I would cut the mold open, remove the metal object, and be left with a cavity to inject wax into.
This initial setup took some time, but once the mold was ready, I could produce thousands of copies from it. The process involved filling the mold with a special wax to create a model, which was then attached to a rubber base and encased in a metal flask with a type of plaster known as investment. This assembly went into an oven to burn out the wax, leaving a cavity where molten metal was injected to form the final jewelry piece. Rubber molds are especially good for capturing detailed designs.
Today, 3D printing offers new possibilities for creating these designs more efficiently, providing a significant advantage to modern jewelers.
!1UP
That's awesome. Thanks for your great comment. The technology has come a long way in recent times it's a pity you don't have the time to use your equipment.
I will make time and hopefully blog about it, I do miss the creative times of the jewellery days. Now I have way too many toys and not enough time to use many of them lol. Thanks for the post, nice to see some artisans keeping up with past art using new tech...keep it up, always enjoy your posts!
During that time I created a chess set out of solid silver these were the molds I created from the pieces. The original pieces were from a set made of plastic that my parents gave me and I used those as the models to burn out and cast. I still have one of the knights I created from brass.
Very nice. Thanks again for sharing.
I can think of at least one poured silver I have that could be made that way.
Very nice. The level of detail is excellent. Looks very likely to have been made with a lost resin/wax cast.
Yeah The Bear who used to be with us on Steemit does this stuff as well. I have some really awesome stuff from him that were lost resin/wax pours.
Nice. I remember the name. Pity he's not still with us. Is he still pouring?
Yes he still pours amazing stuff
That sounds like a really interesting process. I am going to have to go back and check out some of the pieces now.
That looks like a lot of fun, but very much a labor of love. Not an inexpensive hobby!
I have several pieces. But what about this!
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That was an amazing watch.. I haven't seen many regular pouring videos yet so it was a pleasant surprise to see someone doing it totally different and having all these DIY things in place to create machinery for it. My boyfriend would even love this haha, maybe I should show him so he starts to appreciate the art of silver pouring a bit more :) lol
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Cool stuff. used to see afew other pieces like this back on steemit days. Thanks for sharing. !PIZZA !BBH
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I did gold moulding when I was working in Gold Bazar, but now I have left that job. It's an interesting process as well as very dangerous.
That is fascinating.
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It's still a good time to invest in gold and silver, as their prices will rise further over the next year.
This is actually nice. I think the 3D printer is really good for so many things and @thelogicaldude uses it a lot too. If I’ve got some money, I should buy
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