The bronze of every modern cast-bronze sculpture, every marine propeller, every salt-water-immersion fitting, every chemical-process pump. Aluminum bronze (C95400 in the US designation, CuAl10Fe3Mn2 in European) is a copper-aluminum alloy with the corrosion resistance of stainless steel, the strength of mild steel, the workability of brass, and a surface that polishes to a warm gold-brown reading. Distinct from the silicon-bronze (C87600) traditionally used for art casting (sculpture-grade silicon bronze pours and chases beautifully); C95400 is the marine / industrial-tier bronze that has crossed into modern sculpture for its color and exterior weathering. The lost-wax (investment casting) process is the canonical sculpture-bronze pour — wax positive, refractory shell, wax burnout, bronze pour, shell removal, chase / patina. Walla Walla Foundry, Polich Tallix, Carlson Arts and Castings are the contemporary US fine-art bronze-casting houses. Industrial: Ampco Metal, Atlas Bronze, Concast Metal Products. Buy as ingot from Atlas Metal / Concast for foundry work, as machined stock from McMaster.
Copper-base alloy, composition Cu 83-89.5 / Al 10-11.5 / Fe 3-5 / Mn ≤0.5 (weight percent) per ASTM B148. Density 7450 kg/m³. Tensile strength 515-620 MPa as-cast. Yield strength 200-275 MPa. Elongation 12-18 percent. Brinell hardness 150-180 BHN. Modulus of elasticity 110 GPa. Corrosion resistance excellent in seawater (the marine-propeller property), excellent in dilute acids and most chemical-process environments; passivating aluminum oxide layer the protection mechanism. Strength higher than ordinary bronzes (silicon bronze, tin bronze) and stainless steel grades 304/316 — used as bearing material under heavy load and as gear material where ferrous gears would corrode. Casting properties: pours at 1100-1200 °C; sand casting and investment casting both standard; gating and risering similar to other bronzes. Surface character as-cast warm gold-brown; chases (mechanical / abrasive cleanup of casting surface) to mirror polish; takes patina (chemical surface coloring with various oxidizing solutions — ammonium sulfide for browns, ferric nitrate for greens, cupric nitrate for blue-greens) for sculpture finishing. Welds with TIG and MIG using matched-composition filler; heat-treats to relieve casting stress (annealing 600 °C, hour-soak, slow cool).
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere metallic finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: metallic albedo #a07848 metallic 1.00 roughness 0.30 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00
{
"albedo": "#a07848",
"metallic": 1.0,
"roughness": 0.3,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Aluminum Bronze (C95400, Sculpture / Marine Cast Bronze) · finish: metallic
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_bronze_cast_art_c95400")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.3515, 0.1878, 0.0648, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 1.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.300
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Aluminum Bronze (C95400, Sculpture / Marine Cast Bronze) · finish: metallic
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_bronze_cast_art_c95400", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (160, 120, 72)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 1.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.300)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Aluminum Bronze (C95400, Sculpture / Marine Cast Bronze) \u00b7 finish: metallic",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.3515,
"g": 0.1878,
"b": 0.0648
},
"metallic": 1.0,
"roughness": 0.3,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_bronze_cast_art_c95400",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.3515,
0.1878,
0.0648,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 1.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.3
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Aluminum Bronze (C95400, Sculpture / Marine Cast Bronze) · finish: metallic
def Material "mat_bronze_cast_art_c95400" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_bronze_cast_art_c95400/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.3515, 0.1878, 0.0648)
float inputs:metallic = 1.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.300
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
ASM Handbook Vol. 15; American Foundry Society bronze-alloy guide; conservation literature on outdoor sculptural bronze (Susan and Alan Pratt, *The Care of Outdoor Sculpture*).
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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