MK-TECHNOLOGY

The lost wax process has been known for several thousand years, and for several thousand years it has been successfully used to make castings from different alloys. Obviously, the elapsing time and technology development have considerably changed the materials used for patterns and coatings as well as the equipment operating in this process.

The, formerly used, primitive operation of manual application of the refractory clay mixed with water has been replaced with a computer-cotrolled and fully automated process. Due to this, the process is now hundred percent stable and running under the parameters set previously by the operator, though from time to time one can still come across a foundry where coatings are applied by hand.

No matter whether applied by hand or automatically controlled, in both cases the operation most time-consuming is drying of moulds, since it is done in “free air” and running at a very slow pace. This is the reason why getting a ready mould composed of several coatings takes the time of 5-7 days.

In the embodiment as described above, the process is definitely not suitable for prototype-making where the “from idea to ready product” time should be as short as possible. And this is where the MK-Technology Germany come with their genuine designs and new technological solutions.

In MK-Technology the stage of the “free air” drying of moulds has been replaced with an infra-red drying which enables each successive layer to be dried immediately after having been deposited. This solution reduces to about 10 hours the time that it takes to get a ready mould and casting. The temperature in the heating chamber is 32oC, while moisture content in the mould after drying is 8%, which means that it is quite sufficient to produce moulds of the required high quality.

With all coatings applied on the pattern cluster, the cluster is taken out from the manipulator and moved to a heating chamber first (where the wax composition is melted out) and to a furnace next (where the remaining organic matters are burnt out). An advantage of the furnace is that it is operating in an automatic cycle with a nine-step process control option.

Another undeniable advantage of the solution proposed by MK-Technology is that the process equally well tolerates all wax compositions, binders and ceramic materials used in the conventional variants.