About Machining Wax
Machining wax, or machinable wax, is wax that has been mixed with plastic to make it very hard, tolerant of high temperatures, and able to retain extremely fine details. This means that it won’t melt when you mill it, and it also won’t droop, sag, or deform like many other soft materials, so you can mill very thin surfaces and tiny features. Machining wax is one of our favorite materials, and it machines like a dream on the Bantam Tools Desktop PCB Milling Machine.
Uses for machining wax include moldmaking, lost wax casting, prototyping all kinds of parts, dental CAD/CAM, and making jewelry. Since it’s one of the easiest and fastest materials to mill, we often use it when we want to test something that we plan to make in wood, metal, or other materials that take a long time to mill. We also love to eat chocolate, and we’ve made many chocolate molds by milling a wax positive and then pouring silicone over it to make the mold.
We sell it in our store in large and small sizes. We don’t recommend using candle wax, paraffin, or other waxes not specifically made for machining, as they may melt, gum up the tool, and fail to retain detail.
Machining Tips
The 1/4”, 1/8", and 1/16” ball end mills are the best for machining 3D objects out of wax because they give the smoothest contours. That being said, this material mills easily with any tool. It’s really quite enjoyable.