[Jewelry making - Article 00021] - Re: [Orchid] Engraved lines in wax

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>     Someone (I believe it was Mr. Rowe) He also said something about
>     CAD/CAM taking longer three or four weeks to pickup. (Jeezh is
>     this guy ever wrong,) 

    I'm wrong?  could be.  Actually, I'm not even sure it was me who
    objected to your claim of quick learning.  Maybe, but my main
    experience with CAD is peripheral.  I've yet, after several years of
    occasionally fooling the Rhino, actually managed to learn it well
    enough to be really useful to me.  Others' experience, with more
    dilligent study, may vary.  But my opinion is colored as well by
    familiarity with the graduate program in metals and jewelry at Tyler
    School of art in Philadelphia.  There, most graduate level work is
    done concentrating on CAD/CAM and RP methods, and I know those very
    bright young grad students spend a LOT of time learning and mastering
    CAD/CAM and RP methods, all in the intense and competative
    environment of an MFA program, and most of them take the full two
    years, or more, to really become fluently masters of the technology
    and software.  They're making simpler objects, of course,  within
    their first semester or even first few weeks.  But "simpler" is the
    operative word here, rather than fully having mastered the medium. 
    Perhaps part of the question is just what level of skill and mastery
    you define as having learned the skills.  Want to make a simple cigar
    type wedding band with no details? That will probably take you less
    than a day, maybe just a couple hours,  to learn to make.   But that
    would hardly even be considered baby steps... 

>     I'll save that for another post!!! any way he suggested plain old
>     corn starch and guess what, he was right, Corn Starch seems to have
>     a finer grain structure or is just mulled much finer than Jewelers
>     talc 

    I'm not sure I actually suggested corn starch.  What I believe I
    mentioned was that standard drug store type Baby Powder, often
    thought of as talc, is these days made of corn starch, not talc,
    since actual talc is often contaminated with asbestos, and is thus
    considered a carcinogen. 

    By the way, another materials you might try for various powdering
    applications is mica powder.  Not so much, I'd think, for injecting
    waxes, but it works quite well with the vulcanizable silicone rubbers
    that are packed like a stiff clay in the mold, if you wish to make a
    poweder seperated mold that you essentially just tear apart again
    after vulcanizing, instead of cutting.  Mica, being very flat little
    platelets, when used as a seperating powder, would tend to coat a
    surface rather better than powders that are blockier particles.  So
    it makes a better seperating agent for such uses.  I don't think I'd
    want it on a mold during wax injection, though, as if incorporated
    into the wax, it's something that doesn't burn out, and might remain
    in the mold cavity during casting.  Perhaps not a concern, but why
    bother.   Contenti, among other sources, carries mica powder if you
    wish. 

Peter

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