Machinable wax

[Tin Falcon]

Well folks there has been a bit of mention about machinable wax in several posts of late. Practice material and cnc threads. I decided to start this thread to focus on the wax without detracting from other threads.
A good set of recipes here
http://igor.chudov.com/manuals/Homemade-Machinable-Wax.pdf

And a nice selection of commercial wax dimensioned pieces here.
http://www.machinablewax.com/machinable_wax_cylinders.htm
The cost of the commercial stuff is around $ 10 per pound.
so I did some research on price and availability of materials.
First off all there is a large price difference in sources of wax.
Mcmaster carr sells granules of carnuba and candelillia wax for $27 lb yikes and woodcraft has blocks of bees wax and carnuba wax in 1/2 lb blocks for $$$ .
So back to sanity .
Camden -Grey
http://www.camdengrey.com/essential-oils/Soap-Making-Butters-Waxes/
Has assorted waxes in various quantities at $ 5-$ 6 per pound a bit better.
This is out of florida.

and J Edwards Corp of Quincy mass
http://www.bulknaturaloils.com/Category/546-natural.aspx
Has good price of all wax needed bees carnuba and candillia. 4kg -5kg packs for $ 3.65 lb- $6.82depending on the wax.
The local commercial bee keeper has the best price on bees wax.

I should be able to blend the stuff for around $6 per pound.
Has anyone here blended there own carving or machinable wax?
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

Well it seems there are a couple of ways of making wax hard enough for carving and machining without being too brittle.
The first one mentioned above is blend natural waxes. Candillia as a base and then the ratio of bees wax to carnuba wax to control hardness
The second method is to use common synthetic or petroleum based products from what I have seen on various web sites 4-8 parts paraffin to 1 part hdpe(high density polyethalene) aka bottle caps plastic bags etc.
The other thing needed is an of the shelf kitchen electric hot pot. with temperature control.
Another convenient thing here is the density of wax is approximately the same as water. specif gravity of .97.
this is where the metric system shines over imperial measurement.
1 cc of water is 1 gram at room temp. and 1000cc(1 litre) is a 1kg. so no complicated conversions. Ok so that would make a 10 cm cube have a mass of 970 grams . just a little mental calculation.
Tin

 

[Majorstrain]

Hi Tin,
I've mixed up a few batches using a recipe from a guy in Perth, Australia. When I find the name I'll update the post.

The first batch was made using cut up LDPE zip lock sandwich bags, and the others were a mix of the first batch swarf and HDPE milk bottle tops.
I purchased the paraffin wax from a candle wax wholesaler here in Perth. The minimum qty was 25kg at about $3 AU a kg.



The first and second batch machined well with a 3mm and 1mm ball mill @ 24,000 rpm and 800mm/min. The car (below) was cut in this first batch.
The third batch I did not add enough HDPE and the wax was a bit gummy when cut. To compensate I had to drop the rpm and reduce the feed rate.
The last job I did was some molds for epoxy coating on peizo electric bender units used here at the university.

Attached is the pdf recipe I used.

Cheers,
Phil

View attachment machineable wax.pdf

 

[n4zou]

I've made and used it. The recipes given work fine. I have found I can get near commercial grade machinable wax by making a batch per the recipes, allow it to cool completely, then milling it into chips and melting it again. If I want high quality commercial grade machinable wax I do this a third time. If I'm going to cast machinable wax parts in wood (or any kind of) molds I'll process it a third time before use. If you want cavity free machinable wax castings immediately after pouring the wax in the mold put it under vacuum in a vacuum chamber. This will suck all the voids out of the wax. Here is an instructable on building a very simple and cheap vacuum chamber.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Ven...acuum-Chamber-quotDollar-Store-Styl/?ALLSTEPS

 

[Tin Falcon]

thanks for the input guys
Tin

 

[Dan Rowe]

Tin,
I use machinable wax to make lost wax paterns. I buy comercial wax from jewelry supply places because I want the burnout to work with out any flaws.

Here are two of my patterns. I hope to learn how to use the Taig CNC mill collecting dust to do some of this work soon.

Dan

 

[Mawitö]

hi guys, i saw the article on machinable wax here:

http://www.machinistblog.com/make-your-own-machinable-wax/

for me was completely free i already had some bee wax and i used ldpe from plastic bags, i tried to color the mix with some acrilic paint ( never try that react very badly so i spent an hour cleaning the mess )

but the mix 4 part wax 1 part ldpe is really nice, i never used the comercial one so i cannot compare but i think to learn how to carv and do some machining work test is really nice and extremely cheap.

Mine is still a little gummy but is hard and machines not perfectly but nice to check thing before try in metal.

Thanks

 

[Tin Falcon]

well ,stopped by the local beekeeper today.Large commercial operation IIRC they process on average a ton of honey a day. plus wax pollen finished wax products hives supers frames etc.
Anyway picked up a bock of wax weighs just over 13 lbs. will need to filter it.
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

well moving forward. did an on line order with Camden-grey the deciding factor was that they carry the titanium dioxide needed for the mix and I can select quantities purchases.
the down side longer delivery time and more shipping cost coming from Florida.
so:
2lbs titanium dioxide
5 lbs of carnuba wax
10 lbs of candillia wax
I am planing on making the gold charity wax
this will give enough materials for 25LBS of the gold carving wax. plus extra of the waxes.
An electric cook kettle from Wally world is something else I am shopping for.
And need to repair and calibrate my electronic. scale.
Tin
.

 

[Tin Falcon]

The Camden Grey order arrived Yesterday as promised all in good order all items double or triple bagged . It looks like thy package to order. All the packages have the order number and material name an quantity.
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

well today repaired Frankenscale (A head from one and a base from another.) calibrating it was a real trip as i did not have any good reference . I wish I had borrowed a test kit from work. Will probably do real calibration next week. But I think close enough for now for compounding wax.

I cleaned up a few pounds of bees wax put a couple inches of boiling water in the bottom of a large coffee can then kept adding wax. The water helps clean the wax and the dirt falls to the bottom.
I then dipped out the wax and water cast it. Poured a little at a time into a bucket of water added ice at one point.
I figured if it works works gold it would work for bees wax. The wax floats so have to clean out the cool wax after each ladle full.In retrospect probably would have been cheaper to get flaked processed bees wax rather than the raw unfiltered stuff but hobby time is usually relaxing time. A slow pour will give flaked wax.
Now I need to get some silicone spray and figure out what to use for molds.
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

A couple weeks ago I measured out a couple of 1 kilo batches of material. Today I finally did a melt and blend. I used a cook pot to hold water and a coffee can to hold the wax unfortunately I got more wax and titanium dioxide in the cook pot than wanted a mess to clean up. On the next melt I think I will leave out the TiO2.Just seems to make a mess and I like the natural yellow color of the waxes.
The mold I used was an old scratched up non stick cheesecake pan.I sprayed with several light coats of silicone mold release. A buddy from work hooked me up someone gave him a case of it he passed on a couple of cans.
Right now the cake is in the oven cooling . I preheated the mold to 170 then turned the oven off. Letting it cool slow to prevent cracking. hopefully i do not get stratification. I will pop it out of the mold in the AM
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

Her indoors wanted the oven back so had to pull out the mold put foil on the top and wrapped in a towel. The wax is still warm to the touch in the middle but solid . i just about jumped out of the mold. a little left behind around the edges but nothing to worry about. . I ended up with a piece about a 1/2 in thick and 8 x 12 or 48 cubic inches. the next pour will be a different mold and a different thickness. I am going for assorted sizes.
There have been only a couple of responses to this thread . So I am thing is there interest? but over a thousand looks so I guess folks are following this blog and my experience.
Tin

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Tin-

I am interested in machinable wax, and have been following your thread.
Don't know much of what to say except if you succeed, I may try it also.

Thanks for posting, us lurkers are out here and reading this info.

Pat J

 

[Tin Falcon]

Thanks for the support pat .
I know we would all do well to keep a note book to log our successes and failures. I am not consistent in this area . so this thread /blog is kind of doing that. I am figuring this out as I go . There is some info out on the net but not doing what I want. I could buy candle molds for $10- $15 but that could get expensive trying to do a variety of sizes.
I am noticing this sheet is not anywhere near flat. so will have to deal with that. I kind of expected rough size on this and will have to square up. I saw some mini cake pans at wally world . IIRC 12 cavities about 2 x 3 x 1.5 I may do that next .
Interesting though every scratch on the old pan was transferred to the wax. I felt like i needed to push forward on this project and do something and since the weather outside is frightful a good day to do it.
Note to self: Do not use good cook pots as the wax and TiO2 are a bear to remove from stainless steel.

here is the mandatory photo:

Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

I tried scoring it with a plexigass cutter it scored nice and clean seems to carve nicely but the break did not follow the score line oh well nothing ventured nothing gained.Some time learning what does not work is as important as learning what does.I went about an 1/8 deep with the scoring.

Tin

 

[John S]

Tin,

Been making this for a while and it works well, hard to find the materials cheap, the way from hobby stores is quite expensive.
First try I got some reject candles about 4" diameter and 6" high from Ikea at £1.00 each and I managed to scrounge some virgin LDPE pellets from a moulding company.
These were all melted in a £10 deep fat frier bought just for the job, the initial melt takes some time before the two parts mix but after that it's very quick.

Next lot I found some damaged candles on ebay and bought a pallet full for £80.
Sorted these out as there were many in shrink wrapped boxes that weren't damaged and Gert resold these.

Now got enough wax to keep me going for ages.

We use this at the shows doing demo cutting, All I have to buy now is colouring because with the mix we are getting right weird colours but they smell nice ;D

John S.

 

[Tin Falcon]

John thanks for your input. What do you use for molds ? I want to mold up some round pieces about 1/2 to 5/8 and some bigger. 3"" long probably enough.
Thank to all reading.

I did another melt and pour today this time used a stainless steel dry wall mud pan as a mold. This one is much narrower so will have thicker material.
As decided did not add any TiO2 but there was still enough in the bottom of the pot to make the batch white or cream color.
Tin

 

[Tin Falcon]

finally got to hooking the cnc wiring back up after shop rearaging of weeks past . tryyed cutting some of the wax.
sawing band saw works fine hand sawing clogs blades.
milling cuts nice and fast. aggressive cuts will chip out edges.
overall the stuff cuts fast and clean but will chip and slightly gummy. the best and worse of charatoristics. HMMM
but still a good tool to learn on.
Tin

 

[JorgensenSteam]

Tin-

This post has started me thinking about some other alternate materials, maybe melted pop bottles, or rigid styrofoam, etc. that could perhaps be used.

It seems like the machinable wax that can be purchased is expensive.

Seems like lead-free solder would be good if it were not so costly.

Pat J