Palladium sterling casting failure

I’ve been trying a new alloy which is 95% silver, 3% palladium.

So far I’ve had two out of two failures. I should have tried a small
casting at first, but did a big tree with a large variety of pieces,
all original waxes.

It was a dismal failure although I followed the mfr’s directions. I
should mention that my pieces are very thin and delicate. I
experienced no-fills and severe cracks in the ones that did fill.

I figured that due to the palladium content and my very delicate
pieces, I would try again using the hottest recommended temps: 1200
furnace and 1920 metal. I let it sit for 30 minutes before quenching.
This time they all filled, but I still have severe cracking making
most if not all of the pieces unusable.

I’ve been casting silver and karat gold successfully for years with
great success (well a few failures along the way), but haven’t
experienced cracks like this.

Help please. For some reason I want to love this metal, but it’s
playing hard to get.

This sounds like hot tearing if so your flask temperature is too
high. I would try 1000F if it doesn’t fill then raise the temp by 50F
and try again.

James Binnion
James Binnion Metal Arts