Lost Wax Casting

Abstract

The lost wax production process is an intermediate step in converting a design idea that has been 3D printed from Polylactic Acid (PLA) plastic into a functional part via metal casting processes. This work offers an experimental assessment of the benefits accompanied by the lost-wax method, from both energy and economic-related aspects. The methodology of this work is represented by a sequence of steps that involve converting a 3D modeled and printed part (an investment casting tree), into a metal part, which in this case is made out of Aluminum. Aluminum was obtained from recycled products (i.e., beverage cans). The first couple of steps revolve around obtaining a 3D printed part of the desired 3D model, that can be created using a multitude of readily available Computer Aided Design (CAD) software. The 3D printed part is then utilized to create a plaster mold, which is followed by a firing step to get rid of the temporal 3D printed part to leave room for the casting metal. An energy assessment was carried out to compare the lost wax method and conventional machining (i.e., computer numerical control (CNC) machining). It was shown that to obtain the exact same functional part using the lost wax method, 12.124 kWh of energy is required, versus that of 17.297 kWh for CNC machining. Moreover, normalized costs of 0.067$/g and 0.096$/g were attributed to the lost wax and CNC machining, respectively, showing an almost 70% reduction in price when opting for the lost wax method.