Quick Pewter Casting

Just pewter in the bag. When i get ingots, I melt them and pour into a 5 gallon pail of water and it makes pellets. Easier to melt the right amount without out repeatedly melting the pewter down.

You can lose a ton of metal to slag by reheating over and over.

thats a hot tip. no pun intended.
thx

i would love try this, i made some aluminium casting before, but i dont think MDF can old aluminium at fusion point ^^

No, could be quite dangerous.

a little borax flux sprinkled over the metal will help cut down the slag and improve flow. Dust your mold halves with mica powder for a smooth finish.

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Ouch… My try-to-do list just grew.
As if it is not a mile long already :smile:

Nice work Damon. :+1:

Order a carbon stir rod as well. You can skim the top off the metal and it will never stick to the rod.

thx Ebr

When I first zipped through the video, I was wondering why you would be so crazy and heat pewter in your kitchen! Then I realized it was your garage setup.

Yeah, hah. That’s what my kitchen used to look like in the 90s. I still miss it, but get to use it everyday.

fantastic… thanks for sharing.

question… do you have to do this with an enclosed mold? Could you just pour into the half with the carved design in it and let it cool? If you poured not all the way to the top I’m thinking you wouldn’t have any extra bits to scrape off.

thanks again for sharing.

That’s pretty neat. I wonder how small of a mold you could successfully pour using this method. I’m thinking about small jewelry or game tokens.

You don’t have to do an enclosed mold at all. Getting it to flow where you want it to go with the opened up designed I used made things easier. But if you wanted a single piece, no holes, I think you’d be good to go.
The pewter does setup relatively quickly, and pours pretty big with my ladle.

Give it a go. If it doesn’t turn out, no downside really.
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I think as long as you got a main sprue (pour hole) the size of your pour, that tapered down to your design I think you could go pretty small.

Original Monopoly game tokens were pewter, and pewter is used with common jewelry wax castings.

I say go for it.
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there are silicones that can handle white metal as well. You can make your model with the X-Carve and mold it in silicone.

The dark magic is in the gates and sprues. :wink:

heating the mold before pouring will extend the life of the mold. Even with mdf, put your oven on 200 and let the mold get hot.

Looks great! Y axis has 2 stepper motors on it you need to turn up the power in the controller. Inventables helped me and they have just added the step to the assembly instructions. It fixed all my nightmares of destroying material. Good luck. P’s I also turn up the power on z axis just a bit.