Formlabs Clear Cast Resin for Form 4, 1L

Formlabs Clear Cast Resin for Form 4 3D printer

Formlabs Clear Cast Resin for Form 4 3D printer is a high-precision material designed to create molds for casting metal parts. Designed to directly print patterns that can be fired and cast, the resin has extremely low thermal expansion, low ash content, and no trace of heavy metals.

Formlabs Clear Cast Resin 1 liter photopolymer is designed to 3D print accurate, low-ash, low-heat models for investment casting directly in your workshop.

Clear Cast Resin is recommended for use with larger parts in combination with gridding software, allowing for geometries over 3 mm thick.

Main advantages

• In-house production of molds is available. Clear Cast Resin allows you to directly produce casting patterns on the Formlabs Form 4 SLA 3D printer in-house, which reduces costs, shortens lead times, and improves iteration and production flexibility.
• Clean burn-in. The clear cast resin provides a clean burn with low ash content and no trace of metals, leaving nothing to contaminate the final molded part.
• Low thermal expansion. Best-in-class thermal expansion for reliable casting shells with minimal cracking.
• Precise and versatile. Create accurate models within 0.25 mm of the design. Compatible with any metal or shell system, enabling foundries to cast new designs in record time
• Built on experience. Formlabs manufactures industry-leading resins for third-party large SLA printers in its state-of-the-art Ohio facility and uses this experience to develop Clear Cast Resin for its own SLA printers.

Application of Clear Cast Resin

Today, investment casting is used in many industries that require individual production of precision metal parts: engine parts, turbines, medical implants, surgical instruments, dental prostheses, jewelry, souvenirs and decorative elements, various complex components for industry, etc.

3D printing of meltable models for investment casting

Investment casting (also known as lost-wax casting or precision casting) is a high-precision method of producing metal parts that allows for the production of products with complex shapes and high precision. This process has a long history, but thanks to modern technology, it has reached a new level of development.

How does investment casting work?

The main idea behind investment casting is to 3D print an exact copy of a future part. The traditional way to produce such a copy was to create it from wax, which was a rather time-consuming method.

The 3D-printed copy of the part is then covered with a refractory material. After the refractory mixture has hardened, the wax is melted, forming a cavity of the exact shape of the part. Molten metal is poured into this cavity, filling the entire space and taking the shape of the wax model. After cooling and removal of the casting system, the finished product is obtained.

Workflow for 3D Printing Investment Casting Patterns

3D printed patterns can be used to directly replace the molded wax patterns typically used for investment casting allowing for complex geometries, and faster iterations without dedicated tooling. The process for creating a 3D printed pattern is typically:

• Shell, lattice, and add drain holes to the part with a tool like Materialise Magics or Formware.
• Orient, support, and slice the pattern in PreForm.
• Print the pattern.
• Wash, post-cure, and remove supports.
• Plug any drain holes with wax or cure a small amount of Clear Cast Resin over the hole.
• Attach the pattern to a casting tree and proceed with the rest of the casting process.

Clear Cast Mechanical and Burnout Properties

• Ultimate Tensile Strength - 65 MPa
• Tensile Modulus - 2.8 GPa
• Flexural Modulus - 2.2 GPa
• Thermal Expansion, -30-140°C - 94.8 μm/m/°C
• Ash Content - <0.20%
• Antimony - <10 ppm
• Detected Transition Metals (>10 ppm) - Al, Cu
• High Concentration Transition Metals (>50 ppm) - None

Buy Clear Cast Resin for Form 4 in Poland

See the Data Sheets of the Formlabs Clear Cast Resin on "Download Data Sheets" tab