Molding and Casting > Escher Tiling

I was interesting in the ability of re-using the silicon mold. I wanted to experiment with Eshcer tiling, the problem was that Escher patterns are assembled from at least 2 elements.

Fortunately I run into the work of Walter Ranedlshofer who created his own version for the Rubik’s cube.

Phase 01 >  Drawing in AutoCAD

Phase 02 >  Modeling in Rhino

Phase 03 >  Milling The Wax

I used the Modela for milling the wax block, looking back I think that the shopbot is much faster, but I already figured out the setting at the Modela so I decided to stick with it.

Here are some tips and setting to make the job faster in the Modela:

1. Don’t send two parts together. The Modela mills the wax layer by layer so you would waste a lot of time waiting for the mill to move from one part to the other.

2. Use speed 20 mm for second for both rough and fine milling.

3. For rough cutting there is no need to for the Z step to be 1 mm is can be 2 mm.

Here are the settings that I used :

Rough Cut > Offset: -1         Overlap: 0.75         Speed:20      Z step: 2

Fine Cut > Offset: 1              Overlap: 0.1     Speed: 20         Z step:1

First Attempt > Rough Cut

First Attempt > Fine Cut

First Attempt > Molds

First Attempt > Result

Apparently the thickness of the pieces was to thin therefore the Dry-stone dough just leaked from the molds sides.

One thing did learn from these experiments it that the Hydro Stone is much stronger and easier to work with than the Dry-Stone.

Second Attempt > Process

Thanks to Shahar I got another wax block, so I can mill a thicker piece.

Second Attempt > Results

Source Files

AutoCAD File

Rhino File 01

Rhino File 02

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Lining and her boyfriend, Paulina, Shahar and the one and only John DiFrancesco

Source Files