Quote:
Originally Posted by watahyahknow
yeah i think even the factorie makes the core with the water passages and stuff seperate from the outside , it would take time and monet allthough the price might go down over the next coupe of years
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I looked into cored sand cast for my manifold, even sat down and consulted with a foundry on the project, but since I personally only need one, and I don't think there is a market for more, I sought out industrial investment casting instead.
Cored sand cast gets a little more complicated in that you need to be able to suspend the core, where you split the cast has to be taken into consideration, the angles of flanges and such need to be tapered so that the material can flow right and that it can be removed, the shrinkage rates differ from inside to outside, anyway, a lot more complicated.
There will probably be great advances in 3D printing in coming years and there will also be splits in the different technologies being developed. The really cool tech is the laser reactive powdered media printing where the part just grows out of a powdered media instead of the tech that is currently being consumerized which is more like laying down media with a tiny controlled caulk gun. The reactive media printing is the one that can actually print out of more industrially useful materials like metals from the get go, very very expensive at this point though.
If I didn't have friends with access to the printers. the printing would actually cost me more than the casting at this stage, so it's not cheap. Also the down side of 3D printers is that they are not exactly smooth. I may end up doing some post print smoothing to make the cast look more like a traditional cast. I've also considered doing a inverse print and making foam cores, since that is what the Atlas block is and it would continue the "look" into the manifold. If you look at the Atlas block it looks like Styrofoam.
Anyway it's posted elsewhere in the thread but here's the manifold design again:
