Pimples along silver cuts :clueless[1]:

[Ralph René]

Hi Guys!
This are my last engravings for the German Jet Set .
Normally I’ m working with casted silver and was empressed, how nice cuts came out at these plates.

Does anybody know, why casted silver ( for example) cufflinks won’t cut as nice as these moneyclips, which I bought as 1 mm silver plate?
Both is 935 silver, but the casted material always has little waves ( pimles ) at the edge / along the cuts.

Best regards
René

[Steve Lindsay]

Hi Ralph, Nice job.. looks great!
And thank you for including the PC in the one pic!

I know what you mean with the cast. I've experienced that before with cast. Nothing we can do about it I don't think.

[chujybear]

Cast is less dense material.. those clips will have been rolled and compressed multiple times. The cast material is essentially looser, and more prone to little gaps etc in the material.

[Wms]

As Silver or any other metal solidifys it shrinks as this is happening the gates which allow new molten metal to enter the mold freezes so as to cut off new metal filling in where the shrinkage is happening. This results in small voids ( shrinkage porosity). Casters do try to minimize this to the extent they can and some are better at this than others. In a rolled product this shrinkage porosity is further reduced by rolling anealing then rolling more. This added to the inhrent nature of an ingot to shrink as a whole which reduces shrinkage porosity to begin with makes for a better lloy for engraving.