How to Choose Best Casting Technique for Sculpture
The quality and cost of bronze / aluminum casting for sculptures is greatly affected by the casting technique a foundry employ. Tany Foundry summarize the related knowledge according to its past experience and create this chart to help artist to choose the optimal technique for their sculptural projects. Lost wax casting Sand casting Technical WorkflowMaster pattern - Rubber Molding - Wax - ceramic shelling - Bronze casting - Chasing - Finishing - Patina Master pattern - Sand molding - Bronze casting - Chasing - Finishing - Patina Eligible casting material for sculptural project - Bronze; - Brass; - Aluminum; - Stainless steel;- Bronze; - Brass; - Aluminum; - Stainless steel; Key StepsRubber Molding; FinishingSand Molding; Finishing Ideal project scopeSmall and medium sized works with textured details ( e.g: life size bust and figurative sculpture )Medium to monumental works with less details Pros- Lost wax casting can represent details of the sculpture very well, especially sculpture with lots of textures; - It costs less when you need to cast multiple editions from the same rubber mold; - There is no molding line like sand casting, which means better finishing quality of bronze- The foundry can gain much bigger one single bronze casting piece from sand casting; - It can minimize the potential distortion happening during bronze casting, which means better integrity and nice shape. - It costs ess than lost wax casting on monumental sculpture and the turnaround time is shorter. Cons- It costs more than sand casting when it is monumental sculpture. - The casting may get distorted, especially for the sculpture with geometry shape like straight line and edges. - The turnaround time is longer than sand casting because a rubber mold and wax is required before casting.- Sand casting is not very good to capture complciated textured details on sculpture like lost wax casting. - It requires very experienced artisans to perform sand molding - There may be trace of molding line left on the surface of sculpture. Below are a few cases made by Tany Foundry. Lost wax casting Sand casting ...
read moreCase Study: Bronze Bull
Tany Foundry just cast a 12.5 feet long bronze bull. Here is the process how we make it. Step One: Scanning maquette and generate 3D model. Step Two: Sculpture enlargement. We enlarge the sculpture to 12.5 feet long. Step Three: Sand molding and bronze casting. We sections the pattern for bronze casting and assembly it bull later. The material we use is silicon bronze Everdur. Step Four: Finishing and patina. Our artisans carefully grind and sand the welding seam, sand blast and do patina on bronze. Click the image below for estimate of your own sculpture project. We will get back to you within 12...
read moreGold Leafing Bronze sculpture
Tany Foundry has been exploring the best practice on gold leafing bronze sculpture for 30 years. Here is one of our recent case. The sculpture is a 410MM diameter Medusa sculpture. Here is a brief documentation on how we make it. Step One: Digital modeling. There are many popular PC software for digital modeling, like Zbrush, Maya, Rhino etc. Step 2: 3D printing Step 3: silicon rubber molding & Wax work Step 4: Bronze casting, Gold leafing. We cast the sculpture with silicon bronze and gold leafing it with 24K gold. Feel free to contact us know if you have any...
read moreMirror Polished Stainless steel Sculpture
Mirror polished Stainless steel sculpture features highly reflective and long lasting finishing. If done well, the visual impact is stunning. It is also known that mirror polishing is not an easy job. Polishing is time consuming and requires much time and effort to do. The artisan has to be very experienced to make sure the work is done properly. Here is polished stainless steel sculpture Tany Foundry fabricated. The sculpture is 6.5 feet tall, It is made with stainless steel grade 316. The workflow: Maquette – jig building – stainless steel cladding – finishing – mirror polishing. The sculpture is 7 feet tall. We build a jig based on the maquette. The scale of jig is strictly following the maquette. Then we fabricate the stainless steel based on the jig we just built. We use stainless steel grade 316 for fabrication. The sheet is carefully cut, bent and welt to make sure they fit with the jig perfectly. The jig is removed from stainless steel cladding. We measure every line of the sculpture to make sure the size is correct. I am testing the polishing quality of the sculpture. This is final work of the sculpture. We’d like to hear your comments. Feel free to let me know if you have any technical question. We will assist you technically or make a quote for your own project. Please contact...
read moreHow It Is Made Series: Larger than Life Size Soldier
Tany Foundry just accomplish a larger than life size sculpture. Here is a short description how we make it. Sculpture profile: Solider: 1.5 times larger life size figure Material: Bronze Method: Sand casting Bronze casting by Tany Foundry Step One: Digital scanning. The digital file is gained by scanning a monumental soldier sculpture with a portable 3D scanner. Step Two: CNC Milling and Finishing Step Three: Sand Molding; bronze casting Feel free to contact us if you have any question on how we cast this sculpture in bronze or you need a bidding for your own...
read moreSnake: A Sculpture Worth Experiencing
Some sculptures are for viewing. You can see its beautiful with your eyes. Some sculptures are for touching. The gentle touch and feeling of the sculpture give the audience great pleasure. There is another type sculpture. It is for your experiencing. And this Snake sculpture, by Yong Ping Huang, is such a sculpture, which allows you to walk through its inside and view it from different perspective. The most interesting part of the sculpture lays in its interaction between its surrounding: sea. The sculpture is installed coast along Nantes, France: which is well known for its beautiful view. When the tide arises, the snake would be immersion under sea level and emerge itself after the the tide retreat. The sculpture is 490 feet long total. Its structure is made up of two major components: head and body. Its head is giant, with its mouth widely open, showing the aggressive nature of a snake. Its body is made up from numerous bone structure. The body layout in a beautiful and long curve along the costal. This make viewing it from different perspective a very pleasant experience. Below is a brief description on how Tany Foundry casting this monumental sculpture in aluminum. Step 1: Sculpture Enlargement Artist creates a maquette We enlarge the sculpture to the desired size with CNC Milling technique. Step 2: Sand Modeling This sculpture is made with sand casting. From the technical perspective, one of the major difficulties is to make the size of the sculpture accurate because the bones have to be fit perfect with eath other. Otherwise, the shape would be distort and its artistic effect would fail. Sand modeling is the key step to make all these right at the first place. Step 3: Aluminum casting Since this sculpture is to be installed along coast, the aluminum alloy has to be of high corrosion resistance performance. We use A-G3T to fulfill this purpose. It works excellently even in the most hash environment: sea. Aluminum is capable of forming a very thin layer of oxidation wrapping its surface, which is can prevent further corrosion. Step 4: Chasing and Finishing One of the major reason that aluminum, as a material for sculpture, is not so often used like bronze is that it is very difficult to do welding. The aluminum oxidation will make the welding rods hard to perform. Only very experienced welders are able to make really high quality welding. We spent numerous hours on aluminum welding and finishing. Book has its own destiny. So is sculpture. Will the snake become an icon like the Cloud Gate in Chicago, time will tell. If you have any technical question about bronze casting or aluminum casting or need a free quote for your own project. Please contact us. ...
read moreThe Making of A Bean
Simple shape could make beautiful sculpture. We are very honored to collaborate with sculptor to create a bronze casting. Here is how. Sculpture Name: Bean Size: 6.6 feet long Material: Bronze Production: Sand bronze casting Step One: Digital Modeling. Artist use computer software to create a digital model of the sculpture.The commonly used softwares are like Rhino, Zbrush, Sketchup. Step Two: Sculpture pattern making. The artist send us the digital model he created. We transfer it to the format which is compatible with our CNC milling router, then mill the foam pattern. We do finishing on the milled foam to make it strong enough for sand bronze casting. Step Three: Sand casting. As a a leading fine art foundry in China, we are capable of both sand casting and lost wax casting. For this case, sand casting is more suitable because its surface is smooth and there is no texture on it. One of the benefit of sand casting is that it can minimize the shrinkage of bronze,which commonly happens during bronze casting. Step Four: Patina. We employ hot torching technique for patina, which is capable of making numerous color range for choosing. Feel free to contact us if you have any technical question or need a...
read moreBeauty of Chaos: Stainless Steel Fabrication Sculpture
People love colors. Public artists have been exploring using color for their works for many years. Recently, Tany Foundry, the leading art fabrication service in China, work with local public artist Min Chiang on a stainless steel fabrication wall sculpture with gradual changed colors. From designer’s own words, “I want the viewers to find the beauty from chaos”. Here is the brief description on the how we make it. Project Name: The Beauty of Chaos Size: 5 Meters long Material: Stainless steel sheet Grade 316 Wall Thickness: 2.5 MM Production: Fabrication Finishing: Two part epoxy powder coating The Challenge of this work: coat gradual changed color on sculpture. First we fabricate the sculpture with stainless steel sheet. We use stainless steel Grade 316 to make sure its corrosion resistant performance.We use water jet cutter to cut stainless steel sheet to the desired size. Water jet cutting is controlled by computer with very high accuracy on the size of cut. Because of the size of the sculpture, we have to work on them section by section. Then we hammer the pattern on the stainless steel sheet. The pattern is designed by artist. It is very important to make sure the pattern is continues and sections are fit well. After that, we assembly sections of stainless steel fabrication to form one single piece. Finally, our artisan powder coat the sculpture with two part epoxy. The challenge of doing the coating is that the color of the sculpture is not a mono tone. There are several colors on the sculpture and they are gradual changed. We need present the beauty of Chaos just like the name...
read moreFallen: A Man Made Up of Lots of Faces
Recently, Australia sculptor Mr.Ken Sealey designs a sculpture called Fallen, which is a man made up of lots of small flat faces. The sculpture captures the moment when a solider is falling and dying. The sculptor express the scene in a creative way. The sculpture is 45 CM long and cast bronze. Below is a photo of the finished work. As a leading art bronze foundry in China, Tany Foundry is very glad to participate in this project. First, we make the master pattern with advanced Rapid Prototyping technology; then we make silicon rubber mold and wax; finally, we cast the work in bronze with lost wax casting technique, doing finishing and polishing it. Below is a brief description on how Tany Foundry make it. First, the artist sends us the digital model of the sculpture. He sculpt the 3D model with computer software. Besides sculpting directly on computer, 3D model can be also obtained by scanning a real object. This is very useful for realism style sculpture, which is hard to sculpt on computer. The uniqueness of this piece of artworks is its lots of small flat faces, which is difficult to realize in traditional way ( clay working), so the artist make it on computer. Next step, with Rapid Prototyping technology, we make the model of the sculpture. Our next step is making silicon rubber mold and wax work for the sculpture. This is one of the most important step of the whole process. Because of the shape and uniqueness of the sculpture, it requires very high skill to make mold. The faces are flat and the edges are straight, we have to make sure the mold will keep all the details right. To do that, we need to plan the dividing line carefully and disassemble the sculpture into parts. Finally, we cast bronze, doing finishing and polishing on the bronze piece. It looks very beautiful after polishing. If you have any question about the technical process of the sculpture or you need an estimate for your own work. Please contact us. ...
read more18 Feet tall bronze Relief Column: Story
People are always interested in story, even in the time of internet. People tell story in different ways. Sculpture is of of the most interesting ways. Now Tany Foundry is working on some 18 feet tall bronze relief columns called Story. The relief depicts the story and lifestyle of ancient Chinese people: where they lived; how they did their work, the interaction between people and nature. We make the story interesting to viewers and let them travel back to the good old days to see and feel how their ancestors lived their lives. This project is commissioned by our local government. Designer: Guo Deshen Project Name : Story; 18 feet tall bronze relief column Dimension : 18 feet tall Material: 2 MM thick bronze sheet Method: bronze fabricated and hammered. Status: ongoing. Ready for patina. Brief process: first we sculpt on clay the relief. Then we make fiberglass mold from the clay work. Then we fabricate and hammer the sculpture. Finally, we do patina. The designer Mr.Guo offers us drawing of the relief. We sculpt it with clay and make fiberglass. All of the work is done by our experienced artisans. This bronze relief depicts the view of countryside of ancient times. You can see clearly the ox and houses on the relief. The details of the relief. You can see the country house and the trees. This relief is about a famous poet in ancient China. The upper left is his poem. All characters are clearly engraved and the shape is clear to see. The details of the relief. There are mountains, temple and trees on the relief. All of them are fabricated manually by our artisans. Our artisan is working on the relief. He has 30 years experience. Some bronze reliefs we are working on. They are ready for patina. The bronze relief columns are to be installed in our local museum. ...
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