Caster required

lankytank

Western Thunderer
Collective

I've managed to make up some masters for a small project I'm involved in.

Anybody got recommendations for getting brass castings made, not big quantities (maybe a couple of dozen of each?) but not looking to pay jewellers prices...... ;)

Got the etches sorted but casters don't seem to be thick on the ground........

As always, thanks for your help

Baz
 

Oz7mm

Western Thunderer
Try Plataurum in Birmingham - he does a lot of the railway stuff.

Contact Richard Sheard.

John
 

Oz7mm

Western Thunderer
Try Richard Sheard of Plataurum in Birmingham. He does a lot of railway stuff. Make sure you tell him where you would like the sprues.

John
 

Mike W

Western Thunderer
Plataurun are very good, very fast, but not cheap.
Beechcast are a lot cheaper if that's important (1/2 - 2/3 price).
Abbey Castings are between the two.
Devon Metalcrafts used to be good but no recent experience.
Have heard good reports about Slaters, but not used personally.

Mike
 

Scale7JB

Western Thunderer
Hmmm heard bad stories about Slaters... And it's nothing to do with the quality of their casting..

JB.
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
Hmmm heard bad stories about Slaters... And it's nothing to do with the quality of their casting...

I've used Slaters recently to do brass casting from plastic chair sprues to provide brass chairs for the S Scale Parts Department. The job was turned round in two or three weeks and the resulting castings were excellent - i.e. the rail fit in the brass chairs was as good as the fit in the plastic chairs - the criteria for the job. The price was reasonable but I have no other quote for the same job from other casters to compare.

Jim.
 

Steph Dale

Western Thunderer
Jim,
Interesting - does your post imply that Slaters are offering a lost-plastic casting or is it conventional lost-wax?
Steph
 

JimG

Western Thunderer
Jim,
Interesting - does your post imply that Slaters are offering a lost-plastic casting or is it conventional lost-wax?

Steph,

I believe that it is lost-plastic. I send up a number of our Len Newman designed plastic sprues and the same number of solid brass ones come back. This was the second time that the process has been done. I wasn't involved in the first time, so I don't know all the matters that were raised when gauging the feasibility of the process. I think the length of the sprue pushes Slater's casting system to its limits and in the first run a year or two ago, only 80% of the sprue was cast - eight of the ten chairs. But this time round, David White reckoned that they could cope with the full sprue - which they did.

The key criterion was getting the correct fit of the chairs on our rail section. I remember that Trevor Nunn and Len Newman spent a lot of time getting the plastic chair fit just right and the Slaters brass casting has reproduced this fit exactly.

S-Chairs.jpg

Jim.
 
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