G'Day Dennis,, no mate, I'm a casting "Virgin", but one of my staff has a friend who owns a small foundry, and has cast many alloy items in the past, including anything from pistons (mmmmnnnn.........) to wheels for custom cars, so I think that the quality should be good. I'll talk to him before I start machining that big chunk of bar Dennis, .......
I suspected that perhaps this was an area in which you possibly had not previously ventured. I have done a little casting work many years ago in another lifetime .....
anyway...... there are two things that I was going to mention to you.
First as you already said, talk to the foundry guys and see how it is done. You will have to allow for shrinkage, finish machining and things of that nature.
And second, you probably don't want to waste your very expensive aluminum stock on your "master" which is called a pattern in casting terminology. See how "your" foundry wants to do it. Not sure what they are doing now, but I can't see why it would have changed much. It will probably depend on the casting that they use. Back in the day, we usually used wood - with a good surface finish of course.
It's a good project, you'll enjoy it.
Have fun,
Dennis
