Abstract
The present work investigates about the feasibility of polyethylene wax (PW) powder as a successful additive in the investment casting (IC) ceramic shell system for mainly, enhancing its porosity and permeability. This was achieved by modifying the usual secondary ceramic slurry with 4 wt% of PW powder to have secondary coats containing it. The experimental results affirmed that the PW powder modified shell displayed superior green flexural strength, porosity and permeability in contrast to the traditional shell system without any additives. But, a small decrease in fired flexural strength was observed, which is acceptable as ultimately ceramic shells are broken at the end to remove the casting from it. The tensile and impact strengths of the cast parts acquired from PW powder substituted shell were more by 9 and 30 % from that of the traditional shell system. Thus, it is ascertained that the cheaply and easily available PW powder can be a good substitute for improving the investment cast part’s mechanical properties.
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Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Deptt. of Mechanical Engineering, VSSUT Burla, for providing support to write this journal article.
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Authors are thankful to Bee Chems India Pvt. Ltd, Kanpur for supplying the slurry materials for constructing the ceramic shells.
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The corresponding author has conducted the experimentation and the second author has done all editing of text and figures, and critically revised the manuscript before submission.
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Pattnaik, S., Sutar, M.K. Investigation on the Influence of Polyethylene Wax Powder on the Characteristics of Ceramic Shells Used for Investment Casting. Silicon 14, 6089–6096 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01386-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12633-021-01386-9