The Formlabs Form 3 offers a diverse material portfolio for manufacturing jewellery with casting one of the most efficient use cases.
The precision and accuracy of Formlabs’ Light Force Stereolithography (LFS) is perfectly suited to the intricacies of jewellery. You can easily incorporate 3D printed casting into your workflow to realise significant efficiency gains and improved casting quality.
Here’s an introduction to casting jewellery with Formlabs:
What you need (Formlabs)
- Form 3 (SLA) 3D Printer – Low Force Stereolithography uses a flexible tank and linear illumination to create the highest-quality casts.
- Castable Wax 40 Resin – With a 40% wax fill, Castable Wax 40 Resin supports a wide range of lost wax casting conditions.
- Castable Wax Resin – Castable Wax Resin is an acrylate photopolymer formulated with liquid wax to enable a burnout process.
- PreForm software (free) – PreForm takes your 3D model file and slices it into the universal language of 3D printers, G-code.
- Form Wash – the Form wash runs a 5 min + clean IPA final rinse for Castable Wax 40 and Castable Wax Resin.
What you also need (third-party)
- Jewellery investment – this is the investment material. Certus Prestige and Nobilium Microfire are both proven options.
- Furnace (732 °C or 1400 °F), vacuum investment machine, and casting system such as Neutec J2R – for burnout, casting and mixing.
- For indoor burnout, active ventilation such as Vent-A-Kiln is always necessary to remove furnace emissions from the source.
Casting waxes
Casting Wax 40 Resin
Casting Wax 40 Resin is a new material (released 2021) for direct jewellery investment casting. It is high-loaded with solid and liquid waxes to achieve low expansion, ensuring a reliable casting experience across all projects.
Castable Wax 40 Resin is the easiest casting wax to use because it is formulated for reliability in all conditions. It means you can spend less time refining your casting process and save money on wasted (failed) casts.
Castable Wax 40 is suitable for lightweight casts with closed channels, heavyweight, and large parts with proper support. It works with investment powders from all well-known brands, including Certus Prestige and Nobilium Microfire.
Castable Wax Resin
Castable Wax Resin is stiffer than Castable Wax 40 Resin making it better suited to fine structures. It’s especially useful for filigree structures and complex investment casting for high-end jewellery, achieving outstanding surface detail.
While Castable Wax 40 Resin contains 40% wax, Castable Wax Resin contains 20% wax, giving it greater rigidity. It’s formulated for a clean burnout, producing zero ash, to achieve the maximum possible investment strength.
You should choose Castable Wax Resin for complex, highly detailed jewellery featuring filigree detailing and ultrafine structures. Compared to Castable Wax 40 Resin, it’s harder to master but achieves finer details.
Printing and preparing parts
Printing
Jewellery patterns can be printed in batches on the Form 3 or individually, depending on how you approach your workflow.
Printing top-heavy parts such as signet rings oriented and supported at an angle, and printing heavy parts vertically, is the way to go. This setup will ensure patterns are printed uniformly with no variances in structure.
Washing and Curing
Once printed, parts need washing in 90%+ isopropyl alcohol (IPA). You can do this with the Formlabs Cleaning Kit; however, the Form Wash will automate the process and make life easier (it removes uncured resin from the surface of printed parts by simultaneously soaking and moving them in the isopropyl alcohol).
After washing, parts printed with Castable Wax Resin do not need curing, but you can cure Castable Wax 40 parts to make handling easier and reduce breakages. You can cure parts with any UV light source, but we recommend the Form Cure. The Form Cure’s turntable rotates to provide uniform exposure to UV light.
Find out more
To find out more about printing with castable resins, request a Formlabs sample, call us on 01765 694 007, or send us an email at sales@additive-x.com. You can also book a discovery call with our Formlabs specialists Elaine Rutledge or Tammy O’Neill.
Book a call with Elaine
Book a call with Tammy