The use of direct patterns, or patterns created without the use of tooling, has become routine in the investment casting industry.  For more than a decade, QuickCast® patterns, built using the stereolithography process, have been the most used direct patterns in North America.  We estimate they are used more than twice as often as all competing technologies combined. The difficulty in casting QuickCast patterns, however, has limited the growth in the use of direct patterns.

 In the last year a new process from Germany, Voxeljet, has been introduced which claims to be significantly easier to cast than QuickCast patterns.  This paper presents the results of several months of evaluation of the Voxeljet process.  Voxeljet and QuickCast patterns will be compared in several areas critical to investment casting performance including accuracy, surface finish, thermal expansion and residual ash.  In addition, the steps required to successfully cast the pattern and the cost of processing will be compared.  Several case histories will be presented.