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There are resins available to effectively print a lost wax style casting simply by printing the master, creating the mold and melting the resin master out. It's becoming very popular in the custom jewelry industry. It saves a couple steps in the process.
Of course, BUT without a gate or vents how did these get filled? lol.
When the cast your parts in plaster, before they did that they connected each "cavity" with wax sprues and then added a gate. the gate is where the molten metal is poured in. The wax disintegrates and the metal is all that is left behind. Then after that break away the ceramic coating, they cut the sprues and gates off to leave only your parts.Look at the brass parts above. Confirmed by the owner, these parts had NO evidence of added sprues or gates cut away from the parts. The sprues you see are what I designed and sent to Shapeways. He and i are very familiar with the process and we are both flummoxed by this.
Ah, I get what you're saying. Since you created the parts "tree" already, all they would have done is a gate at your central sprue. I see no reason why the tree you created wouldn't have allowed the parts to fill.
That is a shapeways process. I believe it is a powdered metal infused with resin that is then fired in a kiln afterwards to fuse the metal together. @bbussey played with it in an effort to make a custom split frame for a diesel but ran into dimensional issues. It shrinks when fired and the change is not uniform. It took 3-4 tries to get the model to print correctly so that it was the expected dimensions after firing.
Certainly no expert, and only know because I follow the industry, and perhaps stating the obvious, but at the high end of things, there are companies that are 3D printing parts for rocket engines and high performance aircraft. Here is a 2019 article with a video of a metal 3D printer. There is cost return on the base technology to make a complex component in one piece compared to using subtractive technologies (like machining), several (perhaps hundreds) parts that are then welded together.https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/the-worlds-largest-3d-metal-printer-is-churning-out-rocketsPerhaps Shapeways has something similar. Bob
The stainless steel 3D frame was for the EP-3, and I had it rendered somewhere else other than Shapeways. They were very consistent as far as tolerance was concerned. I had revisions due to design errors mostly. I did have problems with the body, which was printed by Shapeways. If I ever build another, that and any future bodyshells will be printed elsewhere and probably utilizing SLA rather than a ProJet printer.