Fill ’Em Up

Unconventional tips to ensure complete fills and quality castings

By J. Tyler Teague, JETT Research

Casting has always been a mix of art and science. Occasionally, though, casters allow the art to overshadow the science, creating traditions
borne of misguided beliefs. Over the years, J. Tyler Teague has taken great pleasure in debunking these beliefs. The owner of JETT Research
in Johnson City, Tennessee, Teague has developed a reputation as an expert caster with a scientist’s mind and a rebel’s heart, who isn’t afraid
to stand up to the industry’s superstitions.

Using some unconventional methods of feeding metal into castings, Teague illustrates how manufacturers can improve the fill and quality of
their jewelry castings. In these three articles, he demonstrates how using risers adapted from the foundry industry in lieu of multiple feeders,
tapering sprues instead of leaving them round, and eliminating large buttons can help you get great casting results time and again.

Using risers to improve fill in complicated jewelry castings

I don’t envy the job of a contract caster. With the growth of CAD/CAM for jewelry manufacturing, the industry is seeing an increase in
jewelry designs that, while aesthetically pleasing, are difficult to cast successfully. Often uniquely shaped (for example, with lots of thick-to-
thin sections) and sometimes quite large (such as big cuff bracelets), designer pieces can be especially difficult to work with when contract
casters cannot modify models.

When feeding a casting of any shape or size, you must be mindful of the “thermal center”—the area that cools last and is most likely to incur
shrinkage. To eliminate shrinkage porosity, you must move the thermal center out of the casting any way you can. It is a given that since the
thermal center is in the heaviest part of a casting, you should attach the feeder to that section to better your chances of getting a successful
casting. But this method is not foolproof: When they cut off the feeder, many casters are dismayed to find the thermal center manifest itself as
a hole in the part beneath where the feeder was attached. There is a little-known trick adapted from the foundry industry that jewelry casters
can use to pull the thermal centers out of challenging castings. It’s called a riser.

A riser’s purpose is to act as a reservoir of heat and feed metal. It is designed to prevent cavities that can occur as a result of shrinkage when
the metal cools. They are especially useful when you have multiple heavy sections in a part with thin areas in between them. I use risers
because they simply work better than an ungainly network of extra feeders running all around a casting and back to the main sprue. More
often than not, extra feeders cause more problems than they solve. They use more metal, make mold cutting more difficult, and simply don’t
feed a casting as well as they should. In many cases, multiple feeders actually act as heat sinks; rather than aiding fill, they require more heat
to fill or simply prevent complete fill altogether.

For instance, in the photo above, your inclination to place the feeder at the heaviest part of the casting—the top of the ring—is complicated by
the intricate pattern on the ring top. Placing the feeder at the bottom of the shank makes it easier to cut the mold, but it’s inadequate to pull the
thermal center out of the casting. As the casting cools, the shrinkage porosity will occur in the top of the ring, the heaviest part. By placing a
riser on this part of the casting, and attaching it to the side so as not to mar the detailed top, you create a pool of molten metal that cools last,
constantly feeding the heaviest section of the casting and pulling the thermal center out. Any shrinkage porosity occurs in the riser, which
solidifies last.

Rise Above

In researching the use of risers in jewelry casting, I decided to focus on two models representative of styles that tend to give casters the most
trouble: the heavy shoulder model (2a and 2b), such as in signet rings, and a cathedral-style model (3a and 3b), which can be a particularly
difficult design when casting in platinum, palladium, and white gold.

In a perfect world, a piece should have a feeder attached to only one of the heavy sections, and any other heavy sections should have risers,
not extra feeders with all their complications.

The placement of the risers in each example was determined by the design of the ring. In 2a and 3a, the risers are on the exterior of the rings
because the bands are plain and do not have any design on the exterior. (Risers on the outside are easier to remove from the casting.) In figures
2b and 3b, the rings have patterning/details on the exteriors of the shanks. This made it impossible to place the risers on the outside, which is
why they are attached to the interior of the shanks.

None of these model configurations had shrinkage porosity when cast in sterling silver. However, had I been casting in platinum, palladium,
or white gold, I would have made a modification to model 3a by adding another riser to the opposite side of the ring, mirroring the riser
pictured. This would ensure that the thermal center was pulled out of the casting and would result in a quality part.

In figure 3b, there is a small wire running from the riser downward. The sole purpose of this wire is to drain the wax from the riser; it has
nothing to do with filling or venting during casting. In all of the examples shown here, the feeder/riser configuration would allow the wax to
drain easily so as not to cause erosion of the mold cavity by pooling wax.

In addition to configuration on the model, you must consider the orientation of these models on the tree to facilitate wax drainage. In figures
4a and 4b the parts are organized on the trees in such a way to allow the wax to easily drain from the mold cavity during burnout. Placement
on the tree is key to avoid the potential problem of wax pooling in the mold cavity and eroding the mold surface, which is shown in figure 5
(below). Consider gravity when arranging parts on a tree. I use an 80° to 85° angle to take advantage of gravity for optimal wax drainage.
Figures 4a and 4b can serve as guidelines for spruing trees with these two common styles of rings when using risers.

Adding risers to your repertoire of casting tricks isn’t complicated, but the results are eye-opening. Take a cue from the foundry industry next
time you get a challenging model in for casting: Rise and shine with porosity-free castings.

Tips for improving fill and casting quality

As a general rule, when casting it’s best to use the coolest flask and metal temperatures possible that will allow for complete fill and good
structural integrity. Cool system temperatures will create less sulfur dioxide gas at the metal-mold interface during casting, which can damage
your castings in many ways, causing rough surfaces, enhanced shrinkage porosity, and copper sulfides and oxides—none of which is
desirable.

To reduce the chances of creating too much sulfur dioxide gas, you must feed the metal in quickly and keep turbulence to a minimum. Here
are some guidelines to follow for feeding castings:
1. Feed into the thickest part of the casting. This promotes differential cooling (also known as directional solidification).

2. Avoid or reduce turbulence to a minimum by shaping or aiming the metal stream as it enters the mold cavity.

3. Avoid sharp corners. These cause turbulence and can break off pieces of the investment mold and wash them into the mold.

4. Use the fewest number of feeders possible to fill the casting.

5. Be sure the feeder has a greater cross section than the cross section of the area where the gate contacts the casting (at least 1.25 times
greater is safe).

6. Thick areas of the casting that cannot be fed from the main feeder should have another method, such as a riser, to feed them.

Taper Away

Figure 1 is an example of a typical 3 mm round feeder with a cross-sectional surface area of 7.069 square millimeter that I see in many
casting operations.

Figure 2 is basically the same 3 mm feeder, but its end has been hammered into a flared shape.

Figure 3 is ideal: a larger tapered feeder with a cross-sectional area of 19.635 square millimeter on the large end and 7.069 square millimeter
on the tapered end.

When casting at low system temperatures, flaring the feeder is beneficial because it increases velocity (speed and direction) of the feed metal
as it enters the mold cavity. As the molten metal is entering the feeder and moving toward the gate and casting, the speed into the cavity
(velocity) increases proportionally as the cross section of the feeder decreases. It’s the same thing that happens when a fireman puts the nozzle
on the end of his fire hose. The water that would pass through a 4-inch hose at a given pressure in a fixed time interval is now passing through
a tapered nozzle and out of a 1.5 inch to 2 inch opening. Since the same volume has to move in the same time, the speed has got to go up a lot.
The difference between the figures shown is that the velocity of the metal entering in figure 3 will be about 2.78 times that in Figures 1 or 2. If
you can fill the parts about 2.78 times faster, then it stands to reason that you can still fill the parts using lower system temperatures that
improve the castings because less sulfur dioxide gas will be liberated.

Going back to our example of the firehose, the velocity change allows the fireman to deliver water to the top of the burning building, not just
to the windows of the first floor.

How to save money and improve casting fills

It doesn’t matter whether you are casting large production trees or small ones, using vacuum-assist or simply gravity casting: The use of large
buttons is a waste of money. It’s pure superstition that a large button exerts enough pressure on a casting to improve fill. Fact is, the pressure
in the flask is relative to depth and not to volume, and only the metal that is directly over the main sprue exerts any pressure at all. Some
French guy named Blaise Pascal in the 1600s and a Swiss guy from the 1700s named Daniel Bernoulli described these laws of liquid pressure
way back. Read up on it.
Basically, depth rules. In Figure 1, the pressure at all points marked “P” are the same regardless of the shape or size of the container. This
means that all that the metal you throw into the button makes you feel secure but serves as little more than a heat source and money drain.

If you really want a good fill, use a tall main sprue with a funnel-shaped pour basin, as shown in Figure 2; the drop of the metal from the
crucible to the bottom of the flask takes advantage of both the kinetic energy gained during the pour and the inertia of the molten mass,
leading to a better fill. I prefer to use full-size sprues and flasks when doing this technique to ensure I get those added advantages. The couple
of dollars for the extra investment is cheap compared to the cost of the metal for a button or a non-fill casting.

Remember, you want to cast only as much metal as you really need. To help you figure that out, here are my step-by-step instructions for the
fearless casting of a buttonless tree, free of superstition. (All of the following measurements are in millimeters.)

1. Weigh your base and your main sprue with no waxes. Record the weight and label it W1. When you finish putting the parts on your tree,
weigh the tree and record that weight as W2. W2 – W1 = wax part weight (PW).

2. Measure the diameter of your main sprue in two places: at the top (D1mm) and 10 mm below the last part on the tree (D2mm). Add those
numbers together and divide by 4. This will give you the average radius.

3. Take the average radius and square it (i.e., multiply it by itself). This will give you the average cross sectional area.

4. Measure the length of the tree from its top to that point 10 mm below the last part, and label it L. Multiply the cross sectional area by that
length.

5. Multiply that product by 3.14 (Pi). You now have the volume in mm3 of the main sprue (Vmm3) that you want to cast: ((D1 D2)/4)2 x L x
3.14 = Vmm3.
6. Divide the specific density of the metal you are casting by 1,000 (i.e., move the decimal over 3 places to the left) and multiply that by the
Vmm3. (See Figure 4.) This gives you the weight needed to cast the main sprue (SW).

7. Multiply the PW by the same specific density, then add that to the weight needed to cast the main sprue (SW). You now have the metal
weight you will need to cast buttonless.

8. Continue with fearless casting!