From Beeswax to CAD: The Evolution of Lost Wax Casting

Coming from an engineering background, I’m fascinated by how ancient manufacturing processes adapt rather than get replaced. Lost wax casting is a perfect example.

For thousands of years, jewellers and metalworkers shaped models in wax, invested them in clay or plaster, burned the wax away, and poured molten metal into the cavity left behind. It was ingenious in its simplicity and flexible enough to create everything from Egyptian amulets to Renaissance bronzes.

Today, the principle is unchanged, only the medium has shifted. Instead of carving wax by hand, many of us now design in CAD software and 3D-print the model in castable resin. The resin behaves just like wax in the burnout, making it a direct continuation of the same process.

From my perspective as both an engineer and a jeweller, this adaptation is powerful. CAD introduces accuracy, efficiency, and repeatability, while the casting stage preserves the link to a method that has shaped metalworking for millennia.

Lost wax hasn’t been replaced, it’s evolved.