Gilrock
Member
I wanted to follow up from my previous post where I talked about my initial attempt at clear casting. On my first attempt I had tried the jewelry cleaner method from its_virgil's tutorial and I ran into problems with it seeming like I created more bubbles than I started with.
So I got a pressure pot knowing that I can use it for casting Aluminite in the future even if it didn't work out for the clear casting. I read a lot of posts about pots blowing up so it scared me into buying the $300 casting pot from CA Technologies...gotta say it's a pretty sweet pressure pot. I see no way that pot could fail. I tried the pressure pot at 40 lbs for 24 hours the first cast and then 50 lbs the second cast and it's not doing much for eliminating air bubbles. And it seems to introduce other weird looking phenomena so I think I'm only going to use the pot for other casting.
But for my second pressure pot attempt I got the idea to try to thin the resin first in the jewelry cleaner and I noticed the resin was looking really nice...almost no visible bubbles and it looked so good I almost wasn't going to use the pressure pot but I did anyways.
So for my third cast (this wasn't all on the same day btw
I used the jewelry cleaner again and after pouring I just left the mold sit out open in the garage. I was really pleased with these results so I've ended up coming back full circle to its_virgil's method. I'm finding that I really only need the heating function in the cleaner...I've tried vibration cycles and it produces tiny streams of bubbles flowing up from the bottom of the cup and then I had to wait for them to settle out after the vibration stops.
I think what happened my first time was I used water to mark a 4 oz line on the cup and I don't think I got the cup dry so it had a couple droplets of water....I remember when I first ran the jewelry cleaner I had what looked like a white oil slick form on the surface which was probably from the water drops. The only other change is I used a couple glass jars the first time and now I've bought the #5 plastic cups but I doubt that caused the issue. I just found out the hard way it's not easy to clean up the container afterwards...I ended up throwing the glass jars in the trash.
Anyways just wanted to follow-up with my results since my previous posts might have steered someone into thinking they needed a pressure pot.
Thanks,
Gil
So I got a pressure pot knowing that I can use it for casting Aluminite in the future even if it didn't work out for the clear casting. I read a lot of posts about pots blowing up so it scared me into buying the $300 casting pot from CA Technologies...gotta say it's a pretty sweet pressure pot. I see no way that pot could fail. I tried the pressure pot at 40 lbs for 24 hours the first cast and then 50 lbs the second cast and it's not doing much for eliminating air bubbles. And it seems to introduce other weird looking phenomena so I think I'm only going to use the pot for other casting.
But for my second pressure pot attempt I got the idea to try to thin the resin first in the jewelry cleaner and I noticed the resin was looking really nice...almost no visible bubbles and it looked so good I almost wasn't going to use the pressure pot but I did anyways.
So for my third cast (this wasn't all on the same day btw
I used the jewelry cleaner again and after pouring I just left the mold sit out open in the garage. I was really pleased with these results so I've ended up coming back full circle to its_virgil's method. I'm finding that I really only need the heating function in the cleaner...I've tried vibration cycles and it produces tiny streams of bubbles flowing up from the bottom of the cup and then I had to wait for them to settle out after the vibration stops.I think what happened my first time was I used water to mark a 4 oz line on the cup and I don't think I got the cup dry so it had a couple droplets of water....I remember when I first ran the jewelry cleaner I had what looked like a white oil slick form on the surface which was probably from the water drops. The only other change is I used a couple glass jars the first time and now I've bought the #5 plastic cups but I doubt that caused the issue. I just found out the hard way it's not easy to clean up the container afterwards...I ended up throwing the glass jars in the trash.
Anyways just wanted to follow-up with my results since my previous posts might have steered someone into thinking they needed a pressure pot.
Thanks,
Gil
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