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Week 7 - Molding and Casting

 

This week's project involves the creation of a casted model. My goal was to use

the possibilities that this technique provides an make a model that would not be

possible to make through the processes that we have followed so far. Therefore,

I decided to make a light fixure with an embedded Electroluminescent wire. The

wire is going to be embedded into a skeleton made of transparent polyester resin.

 

Design Process

 

Design of the wire's shape

wire

 

Creating the wire's negative

wire neg

 

Creating skeleton mold

skeleton

Final mold

final

 

Mold Fabrication

I chose to fabricate the mold from Styrofoam due to the model's large size.

 

Molds

molds

 

I applied Vaseline on the molds to smooth the shape up and make the removal easier.

vaseline

 

Fixing the El-wire on the contours with copper wire.

 

copper wire

 

Sealing the mold with funky duct tape and pouring the resin

sealing mold

 

Unfortunately, the result was a huge mess...And that was because I used polyester

resin which melts the foam...

So, bottom line don't use polyester resin with Styrofoam!