Formlabs is pleased to announce the launch of a new material developed specifically for industrial investment casting foundries. Formlabs Clear Cast Resin and its stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing process enable foundries to produce casting patterns directly in-house, reducing costs and lead times, and increasing flexibility for iteration and production.

With patterns printed using Clear Cast Resin, foundries can expect clean burnout, low ash residue, no trace metals, best-in-class thermal expansion, and dimensional accuracy to within 0.25 mm. Furthermore, foundries can integrate this material seamlessly into their existing workflows, without needing to change their investment material or burnout process.

Industrial Investment Casting With 3D Printing

The use of SLA 3D printing to directly print patterns for investment casting has grown to be one of the flagship applications for large industrial SLA 3D printers. In the 1990s and 2000s, 3D printing manufacturers also introduced new technologies like Material Jetting and Binder Jetting, which enabled the creation of PMMA and wax patterns. These materials could then be easily attached to traditional casting trees in the pre-casting steps.

With 3D printed patterns, manufacturers can reduce their overall cost per part by avoiding the high upfront cost of tooling, making low-to-medium volume production economical, and enabling the creation of complex geometries that would be impossible or prohibitively expensive to produce with other methods. Many foundries immediately saw the advantage of 3D printing for industrial investment casting but were unable to bring some technologies in-house.

Despite their technical impressiveness, the traditional large-format printers that produce patterns for investment casting often cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and typically require dedicated technicians to operate and maintain. For many small-to-medium sized foundries, the cost and complexity of these systems put the technology out of reach. As a result, many companies opted to use external service bureaus to produce 3D printed patterns, which resulted in higher costs per pattern and longer lead times.

Formlabs Materials for Casting

Formlabs has experience manufacturing photopolymers with low coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) that burn out cleanly. The company’s materials factory, Spectra, has been developing resins for the investment casting industry for over a decade.

Over the years, Formlabs has offered several materials produced specifically for the jewelry industry: wax-filled resins designed to be cast in a flask. These materials, such as Castable Wax Resin and Castable Wax 40 Resin, provide good burnout results and improve workflow efficiencies over traditional wax carving.

For larger foundry customers, however, these materials were not strong enough for the larger, thicker parts and greater structural integrity required for industrial metalsmithing. The solution for these customers, then, needed to combine the accuracy, resolution, and reliability of Formlabs’ industry-leading SLA 3D printers with the technical performance of its material library.

Introducing Clear Cast Resin

Clear Cast Resin can produce patterns with crisp details and smooth surface finishes, and provides a clean burnout with minimal ash residue.

Clear Cast Resin enables foundries of all sizes to cost-effectively and easily bring 3D pattern production in-house. Clear Cast Resin was developed specifically for industrial foundries with performance as the primary focus: clean burnout, ultra-low ash residue, excellent surface finish, and pattern accuracy to within 0.25 mm.

In addition to its technical performance, Clear Cast Resin gives foundries access to the easiest and most user-friendly 3D printing workflow available. No technical training or 3D printing experience is required. Foundries can start their first print within minutes, go to do more valuable work, and return to a finished and highly accurate pattern. This reduction in labor time helps reduce the total cost per part, an advantage that can be passed on to customers.

Hobbyist-level printers, which are typically Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) machines, often produce parts with poor surface quality, leading to less accurate molds and requiring more labor for preparation and post-processing. Experience with high upfront costs or poor quality work may make many foundries hesitant to try new printers or materials.

Formlabs’ Clear Cast Resin and the user-friendly workflow of the Form Series of SLA printers combine the quality of traditional large-format SLA 3D printers with the accessibility of off-the-shelf FDM printers. Industrial foundries can bring this technology in-house at a low upfront cost and with minimal training, start producing patterns immediately.

Working With Clear Cast Resin

At the University of Northern Iowa, patterns printed with Clear Cast Resin integrated easily into their existing industrial investment casting workflow.

Formlabs works with customers to develop products that solve problems for all types of industries. For industrial investment casting, that meant creating a resin that could burn out cleanly, hold tight tolerances, provide low ash residue, and no trace metals, and could be run on an affordable 3D printer with an accessible workflow.

Even with these high standards, we found that Clear Cast Resin printed on the Form 3+, Form 3L, and Form 4 met all of the requirements.

Working with multiple beta testers over the course of more than a year, we developed a workflow that industrial investment casting foundries can immediately adopt with little-to-no deviation from their existing process.

Clear Cast Resin Workflow

Clear Cast Resin Workflow

1. Use latticing software like Materialise Magics* to hollow out your part and create a non-solid internal geometry. This will promote cleaner, faster, and low-ash burnout. It will also reduce thermal expansion forces, preventing cracking of the investment.

2. Upload your latticed part to PreForm, Formlabs’ print preparation software. Then, select your printer and select Clear Cast Resin as the material.

3. Print the part.

4. Wash the part using Formlabs Resin Washing Solution, Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA), or TPM with the Form Wash for small parts and the Form Wash L for larger parts.

5. Critically, use compressed air to blast any resin and solvent out of the internal lattice structure to ensure no liquid remains inside the part.

6. For some parts, a double wash may be necessary, removing any residual material in between each wash.

7. Allow the part to dry for at least 30 minutes. For Form Cure L, this can be done using a 30-minute preheat at 35°C.

8. Post-cure at 35°C for 15 minutes in a Form Cure or Form Cure L.

9. Investment Preparation: Attach the part to a casting tree.

10. Investment: Dip the part into investment slurry following your normal workflow guidelines.

11. Burnout: Flash fire at 700–900°C for 2 hours.

12. Casting: Proceed with your normal casting process.

* Formlabs customers are eligible for a 35% discount on Materialise Magics. Request a Materialise Magics trial today to access the discount.

Real World Industrial Application: Diversified Metalsmiths and Clear Cast Resin

This impeller pattern, made with Clear Cast Resin and the Formlabs workflow, cost Diversified Metalsmiths only $80 in material and labor, compared to an outsourced cost of $300.

Diversified Metalsmiths is an Alabama-based industrial foundry that job shops large metal parts for the aerospace, plumbing, automotive, and art industries. While the company has used wax 3D printers for nearly three decades, they recently added Formlabs’ resin printers to their operations. Their experience was instrumental in testing our new Clear Cast Resin and industrial investment casting process.

Diversified required several specific features from a new 3D printing solution: a material that would burn out cleanly, a reliable and easy-to-use ecosystem, and a suitable print volume for their impeller projects.

In evaluating solutions, the company found that the Formlabs workflow was accessible for smaller foundries like theirs and integrated easily into their existing workflow, requiring no new steps to get started.

“The whole ecosystem and support system just made sense to us. The fit and finish of the printer and the software looked miles better than anything else in that price range.”

John Farr, VP of Technology at Diversified Metalsmiths

After requesting sample parts, Farr found that the Form 3L and Clear Cast Resin could be immediately integrated into their workflow, requiring no changes to their burnout temperature, slurry formulation, or part design.

Additionally, the Formlabs workflow offered a slight process improvement: the ability to add gating features directly to the parts.

“The Clear Cast parts integrated right into the workflow. One of the nice things was that we were able to print gating locations right onto the part, which we couldn't do with the PMMA.”

Farr said.

The new workflow proved easy to transition to, so the final thing to check was the burnout process. Here too, Clear Cast proved to be an effective replacement for the PMMA patterns the company had outsourced, at a fraction of the cost.

“The burnout was very consistent with the PMMA. We treated it just like PMMA, and there were no issues.”

Farr added.

For a single impeller pattern printed on the Form 3L using Clear Cast Resin, Diversified Metalsmiths incurred approximately $80 in material and labor costs per part.

Compared to an outsourced cost of $300 per part, this cost level allows the company to rapidly achieve a return on investment (ROI) while also expanding their usage and discovering additional applications.

“Even amortizing the Form 3L and associated equipment, we at least break even with our current orders and will save over $200 per part on future orders. The differences in our workflow, both pre- and post-cast, between PMMA patterns and SLA Clear Cast patterns are minimal.”

John Farr, VP of Technology at Diversified Metalsmiths

Getting Started With 3D Printed Investment Casting Patterns

The Form Series of SLA 3D printers and Clear Cast Resin offer a “set it and forget it” workflow with industry-leading accuracy and clean burnout.

By reducing labor in the pre-print process, as well as reducing the need for grinding or manual machining post-production, these 3D printed patterns can reduce the total cost per part.

Additionally, it adds new capabilities to production without requiring any changes to existing workflows.

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Reference

https://formlabs.com/global/blog/industrial-investment-casting-formlabs-clear-cast-resin/