Thread: Carbon / Aluminium Chassis Build

Would it have been easier to do a wax mold and then cast it, followed by cleaning it up on the lathe and mill?

Originally Posted by Russian 22.

Would it have been easier to do a wax mold and then cast it, followed by cleaning it up on the lathe and mill?

I think it would take far longer and be much more complicated to cast this part. Plus you would end up with a cast aluminium part rather than it being machined from an extruded billet. Cast parts are very brittle compared to extruded and machined or forged parts, this applies to aluminium as much as to steel.
In the end, you would still be doing most of the same machine operations, just removing a little less material. Good Aluminium machines very nicely, even on hobby machines like mine, so it is setup and measuring that takes time rather than actual machine time.

Casting has its place for parts that would be very hard to machine, or are too large to make from billet economically, but for a single item like this, not a good choice.

Saying that, I'm not in a hurry to machine another chassis. They are very time consuming and I made mine as simple as possible.