Moving Forward

[tverdin]

Hey guys, my company has been into shopbot for about 10-11 years. I moved into and took it over about 5 years ago. We have come along way. When I started out they were struggling to cut flat 1/8" material and now we are doing all kinds of stuff. We are a 170 year old family owned Bell and Clock Company out of Cincinnati Ohio. I am the 6th generation. My dad and his 2 cousins are the current owners. We use out Shopbot daily to cut material for our clocks. but in the past several months have started using it for our foundry (not sure if anyone has done that before) we cut patterns of stuff to cast on our bells. Ill attach pictures. We have taken images from customers of things they want on their bell and vectorized them, carved them, taken rubber molds off of them, then created wax patterns out of the molds. shhhewww. Im tired already. Its a long process but its what we do. anyway... let me know what you think.

so tomorrow we are getting a vinyl cutter delivered. We have always had someone else cut our vinyl. I have talked them into buying one and letting me do it in house. We bought a Roland-GX-500 54" cutter and FlexiSIGN software. anything I should know or buy going in? Hopefully I wont have to much trouble. anyway. just thought I would fill you in on what I am doing.

[Rob Gunn]

Tommy, very interesting. I am curious, I see alot of steps to do to get to a end result. Why carved the items, then make rubber molds, then created wax patterns? I would think you could eliminate the first two steps and just carve the wax? Just wondering...:confused:

[tverdin]

very good question. We tried, but the wax that we use is a wax that is very flexible because we have to wrap it around the bell. It also has a low melting temperature so we can melt the wax out of the sand mold. so basically it doesnt machine well at all. I have continued to research and check into this and hope to someday come up with a solution but so far I havent been able too.

[Rob Gunn]

Maybe a dense foam rather than the wax?

[tverdin]

thats what we carve our patterns out of but it has to be able to form to the bell. and melt easily

[bleeth]

Jewelers wax carves very nicely and of course melts out from casting heat. It may be a little stiff for bending cold but I bet very mild heat would allow it to become pliable enough.

[tverdin]

I will look into it. Thanks. Ill try to let you know what i find.

[tverdin]

is jewelers wax the same thing as machinable wax?

[billp]

Tommy,
I've used some machinable wax from these people - http://www.freemansupply.com/MachinableWax.htm
They list jeweler's wax on a separate page-http://www.freemansupply.com/JewelryWaxes.htm

[bleeth]

Verify with them the temps that it melts out as some of their product is made to melt at higher temps than others.

[tverdin]

thanks guys, I will let you know how it goes.