Effects of cooling methods on silver-palladium castings

Cast metal specimens for three ceramic metals were subjected to two different types of cooling procedures after casting. One method involved the rapid cooling of the casting as soon as the red glow of the button disappeared. The other method allowed the castings to bench cool to room temperature. Hardness, bond strength, and microstructural determinations lead to the following conclusions. 1. Vickers hardness values for W-1 and Rx-91 alloys for each cooling regimen were not significantly different. Statistically higher hardness values were obtained for the quenched specimens of JP-5 alloys compared with the bench-cooled specimens. 2. Cooling of W-1 and JP-5 alloy specimens by quenching resulted in higher bond strengths than for specimens that were bench-cooled to room temperature. However, bench-cooling Rx-91 alloy lead to higher bond strengths than did quenching. 3. For all of the alloys examined, quenching produced a smaller grain structure than did bench-cooling. 4. From the standpoint of the parameters tested and the saving of processing time, quenching of the silver-palladium ceramic alloys examined is the cooling procedure of choice for W-1 and JP-5 alloys.