Simple wood patterns can be used to produce simple castings. Woods like boxwood, beech, oak and ash work well for patterns because they can be easily turned on a lathe. Complicated shapes can be built up by gluing, screwing or doweling pieces together. Patterns must be designed to leave the mold cleanly without undercuts. Allowances must be made for machining and metal shrinkage. Tapering deep features and adding fillets helps patterns release from molds.
Simple wood patterns can be used to produce simple castings. Woods like boxwood, beech, oak and ash work well for patterns because they can be easily turned on a lathe. Complicated shapes can be built up by gluing, screwing or doweling pieces together. Patterns must be designed to leave the mold cleanly without undercuts. Allowances must be made for machining and metal shrinkage. Tapering deep features and adding fillets helps patterns release from molds.
t o p r o d u c e s i m p l e vertically the sand close to the web
patterns in wood from which would inevitably be disturbed on A simple pattern, castings can be obtained lifting it out. frees a constructor from continued therefore, must in at least one attitude acceptance of commercial designs be free of "undercuts" Where machining on a casting will and the limitations and work be necessary, an allowance must be involved in built-up or fabricated made on the pattern, and where a constructions. casting will be of substantial size and It need not be overlooked, of course, that early efforts may not be so good as comparable commercial designs, not that a particular component might not have been equally well made by a skilled operator of welding equipment. But granted these, it then remains virtually indisputable that castings do, as a rule, provide the best means of construction, with freedom-when of ones own design to express ideas mechanically. Woods employed for small patterns should be the hard, close-grained variety-boxwood, beech, oak ash, that can be turned in a lathe reasonably easily without tearing. Rotational speed should be as high as possible, and tools should possess ample rake and clearance. Complicated shapes can be built up by gluing, screwing, tacking and dowelling pieces of wood together, interstices being filled and fillets formed with plastic wood or putty, the surfaces finally smoothed with sandpaper and painted with a filler paint-followed by further rubbing down and painting if required. An important feature of any simple pattern (which resembles the casting to be produced) is that it must leave the mould cleanly, and to ensure this fact is not overlooked, it is necessary to keep in mind the principle not necessarily machined all over an on which such a pattern is moulded. allowance must be made for metal At A and B is shown in section and plan the pattern for a flywheel, which shrinkage. Per foot of length, this could be cast in cast iron. The allowance is 1/10 in. to 1/8 in. for cast moulding box at A is in halves, iron; 1/8 in. to 3/16in. for aluminium and l/5 in. to 1/4in. for brass. If dowelled together. The pattern is pressed into the sand desir ed contractio n rules can be in the lower half to form its shape, used on which all dimensions are while positioning the upper half of these proportions overlength. On small patterns the machining the box causes the shape to be similarly allowance will easily accommodate formed in the sand of the upper half. shrinkage on the castings. For Taking off the upper half of the box, removing the pattern and replacing the general purposes, an allowance of upper half, then provides the mould 1/16 in. is satisfactory. If one is sure into which the metal can be poured of good small castings reduction to through a channel. l/32 in. is possible; where there is As the pattern is relieved to form a doubt an increase to, say, 1/8 in. is central web on the flywheel,, the pattern advisable. The allowance must be must be positioned hor izontally as added to all surfaces as at C. On wheels, where the runne r in the shown, for if the pattern were placed BILITY
14 NOVEMBER 1957
669
By Geometer
PIECE /
D 0
HOLLOW
0 I=
mould is to the periphery, extra
allowance counteracts a possible adjacent hollow. A simple pattern for casting a circular cover, as at D, may be provided with a shank as a chucking piece. Machining the casting the shaped end of the cover and outside would be turned holding the chucking piece; this would then be sawn off, and the cover held by the outside for finishing the step and end. Features of any depth to draw from a mould should be tapered on each face about two deg. as shown. Bosses, as at E, may be dowelled and glued in, and fillets made with plastic wood, while a pattern with a hollow can be built up from two pieces glued, as at F. q MODEL ENGINEER