Investment Cast Bottle Openers

In my final quarter at Cal Poly, I had the opportunity to take Advanced Metal Casting (IME331) in the manufacturing department. My experience to casting prior to this class consisted of a single lab taken freshman year, that involved little to no design work. This class, however, dove deep into details around design for casting, runner and gating design, mold and pattern making, and more! I decided that for our main design-build project, I wanted to make a set of custom bottle openers, inspired by a design I had seen online. This page details the design and manufacturing of these bottle openers, with many of the lessons I learned along the way.

Part and Gating Design

Using SolidWorks, I designed the part shown in the image above. The opener featured a keyring hole on the end, and the lettering of a mantra “it is what it is.” For the castings, the solid flask investment method was to be used with 3D-printed patterns. As I designed the part and gating, I kept in mind the need to 3D print them as patterns first. This lead me to break the sprue and runners into three parts that would be glued together, allowing for easier printing. I also modified the parts themselves to be able to snap onto the gating tree. These are shown in the images from CAD below.