FOAMING AGENTS FOR FLUID MIXTURES USED IN ART CASTING

Tibor BED, Viorel ENE Transilvania University of Brasov

From the oldest times man has tried to represent aspects of the environment and of the life. In our days there are, in our country and most of all in abroad, many art foundries specialized in making pieces of art.

The cast moldings for pieces of art are made using a model realized by the sculptor. With this model is made the mould used to accomplish the properly cast part.

A rubber mold is made by painting the outside of the artists original clay sculpture with liquid rubber. The liquid rubber is allowed to dry after each coat. Several coats are applied until the rubber is about thick over the sculpture. (This is the only time the original clay sculpture is used and may be destroyed in the molding process.) Plaster is then applied over the rubber mold to add rigidity and strength. (The outside plaster is sometimes referred to as the mother mold.).

The making of cast moldings, especially for small size pieces, uses the fluid mixtures with plaster. The getting up of fluid mixture with plaster is made using a technique of air induction in plaster. If the operation is well conducted, the obtained plaster is porous with close to 0,25 mm width regular cells.

Plaster Cast Smooth "As Cast" finish (25 RMS) Closer dimensional tolerance than Sand Cast Intricate shapes and fine details including thinner "As Cast" walls are possible Large parts cost less to cast than by Investment process More costly than Sand or Permanent Mold-Casting Limited number of sources Requires minimum of 1 deg. draft Use when parts require smooth "As Cast" surface finish and closer tolerances than possible with Sand or Permanent Mold Processes

Both plaster moldings, so called classical, used to casting of metal pieces, and the false moldings, dont have permeability and they have a minimum permeability. With the object of obtaining a better permeability we can add in the mixture a foaming agent like launder. After the cast molding drying it is possible to obtain moulds with 30 . . . 40 units (about AFS) of permeability [2].

The using of cellular plaster procedure to make cast molding involves the following technological phases: - the making of a water solution with 1,5% foaming agent; - the mixing up of the foaming solution with the plaster; - the casting of fluid mixtures obtained over the pattern.

The authors where carried out the researches using the following fluid mixtures compositions: - plaster 60%; - foaming solution 40%. The foaming solution was the following composition: - water 92%; - natrium silicate 6,5%; - foaming agent 1,5%.

Table 1 The foaming property of some launders (* according to [2] and bold for the new launders according to authors researches)
Nr. crt . Launders type Capacity of Stability of foaming, C the foam, S 14,8 13,8 13,3 0,18 0,80 0,79 Density of the foam, D 0,22 0,16 0,20

1* Launder solution with 55% of active substance 2* Alba Lux 3* Alba super

4* Dero 4 OS
5 6 7 ARIEL PERSIL Pur Universal

13,3
21,7 23,9 24,1

0,83
0,91 0,96 0,95

0,13
0,26 0,25 0,26

The plaster mold process for metal casting is use for the following reasons: - to produce precision and premium quality aluminum and zinc castings - for aesthetic applications where appearance is critical - for low volume applications where quantities do not justify die cast tooling - for castings with thin walls or where weight is critical - to reduce time to market on new programs and evaluate market potential - to reduce time for machining and secondary operations