Originally Posted by smokieborde if ypu milled out the shape in foam like house insulating foam and then washed it out with acetone or zylene do you thinjk that will work useing wet sand mold after drying out the mold |
Are you wanting to do lost foam casting? The typical procedure is to take a foam pattern, dip it in a clay slurry to get a coating that very accurately matches the surface of the pattern, dry the slurry and then pack it in a sand mold. The molten metal is poured in and vaporizes the foam.
It sounds like you are trying to mimic the burnout procedure that is used in lost waxing casting where the wax is removed in a baking procedure. You want to dissolve the blue foam out with acetone or xylene. I think you will finish up with a sand mold saturated with acetone or xylene. Both of these are flammable so life could get interesting when you filled the mold with molten metal. By interesting I mean you stand a chance, depending on how large your mold is, of levelling your workshop.
I think you should stick to regular polystyrene foam for lost foam casting; I think the blue insulation foam contains fire retardants so it is probably not suitable as the whole purpose of these is to stop the foam melting and burning and they would interfere with the foam vaporizing way ahead of the molten metal.