Background
Molding is the process of fabricating by shaping pliable or liquid materials in a rigid formwork. Casting is the process of pouring a liquid material into a mold to achieve a desired shape when the liquid cures. In this post I will focus on making a silicone mold from milled wax and then casting other materials, such as liquid plastic into the mold.
Molding and Casting posts...
- Grow module | Design and fabrication | 2017 Jun 13 | 7 minute read
- Liquid plastic : Smooth-Cast 300 Series | 2017 Apr 26 | 3 minute read
- ...Oomoo... | 2017 Apr 26 | 3 minute read
- Star puzzle : Child's play? | 2017 Apr 25 | 5 minute read
My idea is to first create a small modular testing garden. I began with some sketches on paper and Rhinoceros. The bioelectrochemical modules are red and the frame is purple. I think this way will be able to be broken down and assembled easily and can be grown or reduced by adjusting the array. While the sketch shows a six by six array, I might reduce it to five by five. The testing modules were essentially cubes. This module is has a smaller bottom half to create a lip for sitting on the structure. In the upper portion there is...
The first substance I attempted to cast was Smooth-Cast 300 Series, a liquid plastic with a curing time of just 10 minutes. Here is an overview from the datasheet: "The Smooth-Cast® 300 Series of liquid plastics are ultra-low viscosity casting resins that yield castings that are bright white and virtually bubble free. Vacuum degassing is not necessary. They o er the convenience of a 1A:1B by volume or 100A:90B by weight mix ratio. The di erences between them are pot life and demold time. These resins readily accept llers (such as URE-FIL® 3 from Smooth-On) and can be colored with...
"OOMOO® 25 & 30 are easy to use silicone rubber compounds that feature convenient one-to-one by volume mix ratios (no scale necessary). Both have low viscosities for easy mixing and pouring . . . vacuum degassing is not necessary. Both products cure at room temperature with negligible shrinkage." These silicones also have great tear strength. Oomoo is a two part substance which requires thorough mixing before use. I am using Oomoo 30, which has a ration of part A : part B, 100 : 130. If you trust the buckets, you can do that. You might want to check that...
For my niece's birthday, I three-d printed a star puzzle. The toy however could never be dismantled after I muscled it together due to poor printer calibration on my part (a running theme in this blog). Further, duplicating the toy many times over comes with the time factor of three-d printing. Hint : slow. So, I thought it would be fun and good proving grounds to revisit this project in this exercise. And, the other day she asked if I had made the better version of her toy yet and gave me no leniancy for time spent building my first...