Metal Casting Zone

An old electric oven is what I used for years in my investment shop.
I didn't have to modify it, except for a hole about 2" in diameter to let the wax drip out onto an old tin tray.
The heating elements would last for over 2 years in almost daily use.

Then, for a burnout oven, I used an old gas stove oven, put it up on legs so it was easy to load.
It would dry out my molds overnight with no problem. Just put a chimney on it, to vent the smoke outside.

Are you saying you used two ovens...electric for wax removal then gas for mold curing??

Jammer wrote:
I've got a 20" dia water tank that I want to turn into a burnout oven. Half of it anyway. the other half I want to make into a muller.
I'm going to insulate it with ceramic blanket and then put up a layer of fire brick. I'll probably use a propane weed burner from Harbor frieght for the heat. If it doesn't get hot enough I'll use a force air propane burner. I don't have any plans, I just kind of wing it. I'll put some pictures on when I get it started.Thanks for the info.In the near future Im going to p.m you with some ?'s

thanks for the info

Yes, you only need 300 degrees F to get the wax out of the mold.
So the electric is fine for that.

The gas furnace will go much higher and dry the molds out overnight.

My patterns were dipped in colloidal silica slurry, 2 times and then put in an aluminum sleeve and filled with metal casting type plaster.
The 2 dips gave a good copy of the detail but only took 1 day to dry.
Then the sleeve was poured with plaster and the whole process took only 3 days to go from wax pattern to finished casting. (2 days if doing small parts)

I used the sleeve style as it held the mold from cracking as the wax heated up.

A pure investment casting coating would have taken a day or two longer with all the dipping and drying.

Thanks for the info.
I was wondering if you could to the complete burnout in a converted electric oven so I guess the answer is still a qualified maybe (a self-clean oven should reach almost 1000 degrees).
We are also working with investment molds not ceramic shell so burnout is more difficult. We had a sculptor in this area (unfortunately passed away) who did wax meltout on ceramic shell with a tiger torch in open air. I was also under the impression that he just continued with the torch until the mold was "really hot" then poured the metal but I could be wrong on that.

After seeing this image - www.rotblattsculpture.com/Foundry%20Pages/burnoutkilns.html - I got to thinking about using a water tank also; have you done yours, did it work, did you upload pics? (yeah, I'm new...)