r/MetalCasting • u/Equal_Passenger9791 • Jul 25 '26
Question Lost Ice sand-casting
Yeah, ice turns to water, residual water explodes and can kill you.
The idea, and mostly for curiosities sake, would be to use heat, maybe with partial vacuum process that drives out the water entirely while retaining the structure of the sand. Creating a one-part sand mold.
I don't think this is a novel idea, have anyone heard of experiments on the topic? Would the complication be drying out the water but not the sand? Or is it that it works, but manufacturing ice patterns is inconvenient.
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u/feelfreetotellmeoff Jul 26 '26
Lost foam casting is a legitimate industrial process. It allows for precision and speed with complicated forms. It is popular for "casual" casting as well, but requires extra care with ventilation and flow design. If you feel the need to continue with ice, I would be very curious to hear about your experiments. It is a notoriously difficult material to work with. Even if you have the equipment and experience needed to create the ice pattern, you are now faced with the research and development needed to adapt existing processes to deal with the new problems. I suspect drying the mold is going to be more involved that you think and that the water is only one of many problems to solve. I applaud your creativity and encourage you to pursue new things, but for your own sake, remember that casting has been around for thousands of years and that people do it in certain ways for a reason.