Porcelain or Ceramic Mold?

[.458]

Has it been done? Does it work? It was just a thought.

[btroj]

It would work. Lead wouldn't stick. Biggest issue would be the brittle nature of the mould material. Don't drop it. Dipping it in water to cool it could be a potential hazard too. You sure as heck aren't gonna drill and tap it for a set screw!

We have materials that work so I don't think any mould companies are gonna spend the R&D money to make it viable.

[w5pv]

May could make molds with ceramic liners like some mechanical seals or coatings on shafts where Orings run.The cost would be high and probley be prohibitve.

[scb]

I've seen some of the work done by this company http://roccera.com/company/profile.html . It may not be as expensive as one might think. I don't know if they would have any interest tho. Your right however it probably wouldn't be for the "LEE" crowd.

[Bzcraig]

Theoretically speaking yes, but practically not so much.

[gwpercle]

" In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. "
Yogi Berra

[MtGun44]

What is the supposed ADVANTAGE?

Bill

[John Boy]

Has it been done? Does it work?

458 - if the materials were feasible for bullet mold, every catalog would have them... No

[longbow]

Some old ball moulds were carved from soapstone. Yes, it could work but as stated how would you attach a a sprue plate? How would you attach handles? etc.

A machinable ceramic might work but cost would most likely be very high.

How would the cavity(s) be formed? Moulding has shrinkage and baking issues with size changes. and we are trying to maintain sizes within a couple thou or better. so again it would most likely have to be machined and if it is going to be machined then why would you machine it out of ceramic rather than something easier to machine... like iron, brass, aluminum.

Possible, yes. Practical, no.

Longbow

[montana_charlie]

If the person asking this question knew anything about ceramic casting other than the name, he would also know that the mould is destroyed as each 'product' is ready to be removed.
Generally, the 'pattern' is the only reusable part of the process.

So, you could have a permanent 'bullet' that would be used to make each ceramic mould.
Then, after the casting has hardened, the mould is shattered to extract the new item.
The advantage is that every bullet would be identical to all of it's siblings.

The idea of creating a new mould (from a permanent pattern) for each bullet you want to run through the lubesizer just sounds a bit too time consuming ... not to mention the volume of materials needed.

It would essentially require a twenty dollar process to produce a three cent bullet ... one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_mold_casting

CM

[Mal Paso]

It would essentially require a twenty dollar process to produce a three cent bullet ... one time.

Ah! A project for the government.

[NoZombies]

So, you could have a permanent 'bullet' that would be used to make each ceramic mould.
Then, after the casting has hardened, the mould is shattered to extract the new item.
The advantage is that every bullet would be identical to all of it's siblings.

I have used the lost wax method for casting silver bullets. it works well, but as noted, would be cost prohibitive with lead.

I have also made graphite molds for silver. I gave up on the project pretty quickly, there were a number of issues with porosity and consistent fill, so I went back to lost wax. Graphite could be used with lead, but it would be difficult to attach a sprue plate without it creating a weak spot in the block.

For lead casting, some ceramic materials could be used to create a permanent mold (not the same as the lost wax process) but between cost, issues with material durability in impact and the limited gains over currently used materials, no-one has spent much time on the project, as far as I'm aware. It could be done, but very little would be gained by doing so. Brass is probably one of the better materials we have for molds due to the heat transfer rates, but it's heavy. Aluminum is light, and isn't far behind brass in thermal efficiency. Iron isn't the lightest, or the most efficient, but it sure is durable.