Re: Do you have a solution for melting wax uniformly across its entire volume?

Heating is done by one of three processes: conduction, convection and 
radiation.

Conduction transfers heat by placing a colder object in touch with a warmer 
one.  It is also responsible for moving heat within a body such as your 
wax.  Heat will naturally flow from the warmer wax to the colder portions 
of the wax.  It is slowed by the thermal conductivity of wax; its ability 
to flow heat.  Metals are great conductors, thus their temperature will get 
uniformly warmer.  Insulators, which I suspect wax tends towards, to do not 
flow heat very well. Your oven mitt is a reasonable insulator, that's why 
you use them to pick up a hot object.

Convective heating is when a liquid or gas moves heat from one place to 
another.  Warm air heating of your house, for instance.  You can accelerate 
the heating of an object such as wax by blowing hot air accross it.  A 
convective oven is an example of this.  Unfortunately, the conduction of 
the heat to the inside of the wax is still at the mercy of the first type 
of heating.

Radiation is the heating of an object by light or radio waves which are 
absorbed by the object.  We use to think of this as the classic case of an 
object being warmed by the sun.  No air or any means of conduction or 
convection between the sun (the source) and the object.  A toaster largerly 
works on this principle because it has a hot radiative source close to the 
bread.
A microwave could be thought of as a radiative heater, except the heat is 
absorbed all throughout the object, not just at the surface as in the 
classical case of radiation.

I believe a microwave works well because of the water in the food, which is 
excited by the radiation.  Your wax has no water, and my not react with the 
microwaves at all.  Induction heaters work because the radio waves induce a 
current in the metal, which developes heat due to the resistance to flow.  
Your wax would not respond to this either.

How much can you control the shape of the wax?  If you have a cube of wax 
3" on each side (27 cubic inches), you are at the mercy of the thermal 
conductivity of the wax due to the physical shape of the wax.  If you want 
to uniformly heat the wax, start with a thin sheet 18" x 9" x 0.166" in 
size.  Now you could place it in a convective or radiative oven and heat 
both sides of the sheet.  The heat would only have to travel 1/2 the 
shortest distance (.088 inch) instead of having to flow 1.5 inches to the 
center of the cube.  You could accomplish the same thing by starting with a 
ribbon of thin wax or small diameter rod which is long.  The heat could be 
applied all along the length of the ribbon or rod.  How about cutting up 
the wax into small pieces or even grinding it up and blowing it past a 
heating element.  In all of these cases, you are shortening the conductive 
path in at least one dimension.

Since I don't know the reason for the question, I don't know if the above 
really helps you solve the real problem.