They were when I moved from Squaw Pass 12 years ago, and with all the art foundries in the region, I would think that they would be. But it was quite a while ago.
Kent
I wasn’t able to find addresses for them.
Rindert
I always had to go through the corporate sale site online or call. The warehouses do not do any sales and are not open to walk-in customers. I remember that ransom and randolf are mfg and corporate sales are in NW Ohio, but I do not remember where Remet is located. Like a lot of companies, they use public warehouses all over the country to supply local customers. The liquid component of the slurry is freeze sensitive, so they would stock up the Aurora warehouse in the fall to avoid shipping across the midwest during the winter. So you will never find a local contact under their name.
kent
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K, I see how that works.
Since you seem to be involved with art you might like to have a look at Reynolds Advanced Materials. They have a store front at 3920 Grape St, Denver. https://www.reynoldsam.com/
Rindert
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we moved from Colorado 12 years ago and now homestead in western pa. I miss a lot of things about the mountains, but this is our retirement garden of Eden.
kent
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Thanks, Rindert! Catchy name, but I never heard of them…
Now another endless rabbit hole to explore! 
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Maybe other folks have seen this, but I have never seen someone with a flask split vertically. He is making a giant v-belt pulley
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I think its great that a person can make such complex shapes in metal just in their garage.
Rindert
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Apparently, you can use PVB filament similar to the process for PLA but with better results because you can smooth it with isopropyl alcohol. It is sold under a tradename of Polycast. But you do the plaster cast and burnout with it as well, but it doesn’t leave residue like lost PLA does.
It might be cheaper then the wax filament, and you can use PLA setting on the 3d printer. But it is extra work.
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Yes, but if you start simple and learn at each step you can get very good results with just materials you buy at Home Depot and craft stores. Big learning curve but low cost.
Rindert
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The lost foam is actually -easier- because you don’t have the burn out step. The issue to me is replication, because I am prone to making mistakes. If I had better tools like a mill or cnc router it would be a different story. Finding free foam isn’t an issue.
The most accurate printers are the resin printers like they print Nike shoes with. If you could get polyurathane to burn out cleanly. It could lend itself to some wicked cool casts.
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Sean if you needed to make a bunch of something and had a 3D printer, some slicer programs have a Mold Mode where it prints a casting negative.
You could then use the 2 part expanding foam, extract the foam and use it for lost foam casting.
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I have seen that setting. Typically polystyrene is molded using beads and a pentane gas as the activator, then you have to keep it under pressure to keep the beads tight. The only molds I have seen are metal.
It does bring up an interesting question on whether the casting would work with liquified polystyrene. You basically can take polystyrene, dump it in acetone, then it liquifies it and you can pour it into a mold. It would be more akin to a plastic fork made of polystyrene. The question would be whether it would work because there wouldn’t be any air pockets.
The two part expanding foam is urethane, and resin printers can print that directly like in Nike shoes. But I haven’t seen anyone use it for metal casting.
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I follow this with great interest, i’ve done a lot lost foam casting, and also wants a way to replicate those foam parts.
Seems best option should be a 3-d high speed cnc mill, but cnc/cad, computers are’nt my business thought.
I’ve tried some experiments with that building/spraycan-expanding foam, but no good results at all, it expands heavily and have broken some molds i’ve made out of plaster of paris, it sticks extremely well to smallest little point where silicone/ptfe coating is’nt enough, and the foam expands very different, tends to be very dense in the bottom of mold, and in some smaller parts.
Them denser parts doesn’t seem to vapourize fast enough when pouring the metal, leaves ugly surface/pockets.
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I would encourage you to try cad, it isn’t simple, so it will take a bit to learn. don’t give up. Then you have all the dimensions written out, and can view it before making it, and you can still use whatever you use now to make the foam pieces. And if you decide you need to make another one, they are there, or if you need to modify the design slightly, you don’t have to retake all the dimensions and figure out what you did. And shrinkage is an issue with aluminum casting, so you design a part for exactly what you need, but then you have to add 5+% for shrinkage and maybe an extra 1% for machining or finishing. (the less material you have to remove the easier, faster, cheaper it is) It will automatically do that for you which saves you from having to do either another cast, or making it too big and having to do a lot of machining/filing after it is done.
IF you end up finding someone with a 3d printer or cnc mill, you can export a file that can be used. There are services that will do exactly that for you, and then ship you the object or maybe you can find someone local. If you get comfortable with it, you can set up your own system, but it is it’s own rabbit hole when you get to the details. It is more important to have the design file. Because I assume, that you are replicating parts for say old chainsaws, and it takes quite a bit of time to do all the measurements. Then 3 years down the road, you have to make another one. Or a lot of times manufacturers will make step changes so it is the same part except they added or moved something between model years.
Both cnc milling and printing work on the same principles except one adds and one subtracts material. simplified, they take the object and slice it horizontally along the z-axis. so your object is like a stack of graph paper. where each sheet is called a step on the z-axis, then the xy is just a filled in block on the paper where your object is. then the tool steps through all the xy coordinates on that layer and adds or subtracts based on whether the xy coordinate point is filled in or not. The slicer program actually tries to figure out the fastest path for you.
Then there are some issues. like a 3d printer can’t just print horizontally without support underneath it. and a mill the quill might get in the way of the cut or you have to rotate the piece or switch tools. Sometimes the software figures this out, and sometimes it doesnt 
Milling is probably harder.
Tinkercad is what our middle school uses. i believe it is a free online and has some decent tutorials, but it is feature limited unless you pay for the license and it may not have all the design features you want and may limit file exports. AutoCAD bought them, which is the top of the line industry standard software but licensing cost is insane for a hobbyist.
FreeCAD is a free open source tool, and they have tutorials but like all open source stuff they aren’t necessarily professional tutorials. But it has some advanced features, if you are making advanced parts.
On the bright side most of the tools use the same design concepts, so once you start thinking about how to build the objects, it isn’t as big of a jump between the tools. and most of the terminology is the similar if you have to google to how to do something.
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Thank you Sean for the encouragement, and that compare to a stack of paper was a good explanation, it really made some things clearer.
When i took shop-classes in school we had to take extra classes, and i was curious about that cad/cnc shop-class but decided it only would give me a headache, staring into those old flickering crt computer screens for hours, anyway me and some friends took the course in psychology instead, with the motivation there should be a lot of girls. It was not…regretting this by now.
And you’re right, i make much stuff for the old chainsaws, recreating parts mostly from photos, ant there it would be really nice to make more than one part, there are other chainsaw nerds, and it would be really nice to share/help/trade/sell some hard to find parts.
I should really consider to learn more about cad, anyway it could be real nice to build some scrappy redneck engineering 2d cnc for my plasma, it could be really useful…
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heh, at least you had a reasonable reason for psychology. I signed up for shop class, and my football coach told me that if I wasn’t in 'football gym; class I wouldn’t play much. I regret dropping the shop class. I would have played anyway.
cad has gotten easier in ways and more complicated in other ways since the days of CRTs. We didn’t even have that option in school. They just started offering it at the community college.
Honestly, since you do lost foam casting anyway, I would look at a cnc router. something like:
https://www.amazon.com/Engraving-Milling-Rounter-Machine-30x18x4-5cm/dp/B07T6DPRQW/
You might be able to build one cheaper or mod it to get more vertical height or a larger table. I don’t think they are super accurate but they will do soft metals like copper and aluminum as well as foam. It is okay, because you need to see it work and use the software and figure out what everything means and most people mod them anyway.
There are directions online for building your own. It is literally almost a duplicate of the original prusa 3d printer build with the plywood. And not far off from the design of most cnc plasma machines.
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That was just what i meant, and router was the correct term 
That would make a good start to learn, i have a lot of stepper motors and drivers, rack’s and stuff, but need time to try to build something.
It would also be neat if there was kit’s available for the part of the build “between” the computer and the stepper drivers.
Thinking it’s best to start to learn with some cheap easy stuff 
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I’ve bought a few things from this site before. They are doing well for me. https://buildyourcnc.com/
I think this book is good. He is a working man, so his language is very basic, but he is intelligent.CNC Robotics: Build Your Own Shop Bot
Rindert
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