Dear all. I’ve got a problem with my 18k pink gold castings. After
the cast, when I heat the casted item (annealing or soldering), the
gold shows very heavy cracks and the piece becomes distorted.
Unusable! It’s not a problem of alloy, I have used many with the same
result. Any idea what the problem is? Thank you all. Fady.
Hi It appears as though you either heated the metal to much during
casting {copper alloys burn out rather quickly} and if they perhaps
used platinum to get the pink instead of rose color, you may be
dealing with a critical temperature duration so you can melt the
alloy without losing the copper. my other thought is you may have
left the mold in the vacuum chamber. let it spin to long, or
quenched the mold to soon and you crystallized the metal. just my
two cents Ringman John Henry
We’ve seen a lot of posts on this problem in the past, and I doubt
it was ever resolved. 18k rose is a major problem - try moving to 14k
and you’ll lose the problems.
Mike Rogers
Precious Metal Arts
finecustomjewelry.com
If you are alloying the metal yourself, in order to ensure a
homogenious consistency in the alloy you typically have to cast the
metal into an ingot first, then remelt it when you cast. This may
also help if you are getting the alloy already made.
DAVE