Tips on workflow to create casting pattern from finished model?

[Anonymous]

Hello -

I have designed a little part that a local company that normally does jewelry with lost 3dprint patterns, may be willing to take a crack at for me.  They have some weird 3d printer that prints in a material that burns out of the mold very cleanly and gives amazing detail in the castings of rings etc. I was on a tour of the place the other day and came away all excited about the concept of making a few small parts for me in bronze (they only work in bronze and silver).

My part is small, but there's a number of secondary drilling operations that will be done.  I'd like to hear about some workflow tips on preping the finished 3d model for a casting pattern with respect to these holes.  I'd like to have little divots in place of the hole in places on the casting so I can locate the drill bit there (this is not super precision, but I will clamp it up in a drill press to drill the holes).  That's easy enough to do but I got to thinking about what would be the "correct" procedure - if there is a correct/stay away from procedure -

- copy the body, delete the faces for the holes, then model a divot in place

- create a component from the original part, then do the above deletion of faces  and model a divot

- model the divot in the timeline before the holes are extruded, then supress the hole extrusion feature prior to creating the stl model for casting

- others ?

There's a few holes, and I got to thinking about ways that I can model the casting pattern so that if/when I move the holes in the completed model, the casting model would update properly without me having to remember things.

Thanks for any tips or guidelines on this.  In a way it's somewhat similar to the "stock from model" idea in the CAM workspace but I've never used cam, just seen reference to it in passing in some of the youtube vids.

Thanks !

Lewis

[TrippyLighting]

I am not clear on what you want to drill the holes into, the actual cast part , or the mold/pattern.

Most of us can provide better guidance with there's a screenshot of the geometry 😉

[chrisplyler · Accepted solution]

Have you already got a Component with Hole features in place?

Just Copy that Component, Paste New into the top level of the Assembly, and then Edit the copy's Hole features, making them smaller diameter and very, very shallow.

Bingo, you've now got a version with your holes in it, and you've got a copied version that's got divots at the hole locations instead.

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Sorry for the delay getting back on this - being retired seems to mean I have no time to get everything done that I want to ....  anyway, thanks for the feedback.  The copy / paste/new procedure is exactly what I need to do here and will follow along that path.  I'll report back if/when I can convince the jewlery outfit to make a part for me.

Cheers,

Lewis

[TrippyLighting]

Post removed 😉