Making Pouring Moulds

[BoredGit]

Making pouring moulds

 

I am new to silver pouring and living in the UK it is expencive to get custom mould, or even high quality moulds.

 

I have done quite a lot of wood engraving with my Dremel, and I’m going to give it a try with some graphite blocks. There are plenty of videos on YouTube where people have used a milling machine or pillar drill with a milling bit in, but not having those I am thinking about other ways to do it.

 

Has anyone on here used a CAD router to do engraving? I have used 3D software in my day job but I’m far from an expert and I’ve never used a cad machine (not even a 3D printer).

 

If anyone has, or knows anyone who has or can give me some directions it would be great. It’s something I want to get in to and a new skill to put under my belt.

 

Thanks everyone

[BackyardBullion]

3 minutes ago, BoredGit said:

Making pouring moulds

 

I am new to silver pouring and living in the UK it is expencive to get custom mould, or even high quality moulds.

 

I have done quite a lot of wood engraving with my Dremel, and I’m going to give it a try with some graphite blocks. There are plenty of videos on YouTube where people have used a milling machine or pillar drill with a milling bit in, but not having those I am thinking about other ways to do it.

 

Has anyone on here used a CAD router to do engraving? I have used 3D software in my day job but I’m far from an expert and I’ve never used a cad machine (not even a 3D printer).

 

If anyone has, or knows anyone who has or can give me some directions it would be great. It’s something I want to get in to and a new skill to put under my belt.

 

Thanks everyone

The only help I can give here is to talk to @Fossilmetals who hand carves some moulds. His work is amazing and he is a stand up bloke. 

[BoredGit]

2 hours ago, BackyardBullion said:

The only help I can give here is to talk to @Fossilmetals who hand carves some moulds. His work is amazing and he is a stand up bloke. 

Will do. Thank you. Again! I need to start paying you for all your help.

[MattHird]

Hi Bored Git

One of my side gigs is engraving and milling (hoping to get some coin related boxes and inserts sorted at some point) and its something iv thought about doing something similar for a little while for personal use.

When i have asked around with people with a bit more experience the main bit of advice i got is to make sure your extraction is spot on (aim for overkill) as the carbon dust can play havoc with electronics/PCB's (or pay £££££ for a water jet mill). Im not sure whether this is a bit of an old wives tale as id not heard of a specific case of anything serious happening but the few people i asked all said the same thing.

One solution i came up with was to potentially use a wooden mould coating it in something like metasilicate but have never got further than the theoretical for this for silver, iv made up a few moulds that were going to be used for lead with this method but not sure if its transferable for SIlver. Using wood would definitely be a little kinder to learn with (and cheaper i would think). 

If it is just for personal use another option could be use a standard rectangular/round etc mould and the machine the bar/round after, you should be able to get plenty of detail etc but it may not be the look your after. This will be the route i go down i think as the art of pouring is not something i have remotely enough time to master at the moment. Definitely not commercially viable though.

If you do manage to  get set up id be really interested to hear how you get on, would definitely be cool to be able to make your own custom bars 

 

Thanks

Matt