from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
The paper deals with methods of cleaning metal sponge castings. This type of metal foam materials, which is unique amongst other types by having fully interconnected and open pores, is produced by a two-step investment casting process using an evaporative polyurethane pattern. A special gypsum compound is used as a mould making material that is able to completely fill the complex pore system during moulding. However, after casting, the moulding material has lower collapsibility (higher residual strength). For this reason, there is a problem with the removal of mould residues from individual pores. Therefore, various alternative methods of cleaning this type of casting have been designed and tested in the experiment.
Keywords: Metal sponge, investment casting, gypsum moulding materials, cleaning methods© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.