[the4thseal]

Does anyone know how to make home made machining wax? The commercial stuff seems a little steep and was wondering if there is a home made analog. I am looking for educational purposes so I do not bust the budget.
TC

[HuFlungDung]

I've used commercial parrafin wax, and it seems to be okay, but still not cheap.

The wax chips are still messy and clingy. If you want to save them and reuse in a new melt, it is a bit of hassle to filter out the metal that gets swept or vacuumed up with the wax and cast the new slab....plus it shrinks and requires premachining to square it up again.

My preference is to use MDF board. While not as fine grained a result as wax would give, it is cheap, comes in nice flat planes, and is quick and easy to laminate into a stack to suit your thickness requirements of the moment. Just vacuum up the dust as it comes off the tool and dispose of it.

Actually, good software simulation is all I really need and use anymore, unless the customer wants a hands on sample of his part to play with. MDF is generally fine for the 'rough idea phase' of a development.

[greybeard]

The only help I can give is that the people who make decorative candles use a hardener as an additive. I have a vague memory that it may be carnuba wax, but that could well be wrong.
I used to make oval picture frames using paraffin wax as bought, then cast into slabs using an old mirror as a way of getting a flat base. I then used an oval lathe turning under a static profile tool to give me a male mould into which I poured silicone rubber.

I recycled the wax over a period of about ten years. It got pretty grubby, but still gave perfectly good results.