Week 06 Molding and Casting

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

            This week, I was not feeling very well due to my fractured bone. I could not go to class last week and had hard time understanding the material. However, I was able to mold a simple design :)

            I designed the letters in Rhino. I wanted to make letters of my name so that I could decorate my desk.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

            The wax was not cut straight. I have not thought about that during my design. After gluing the wax on the plate, I noticed this problem and had to design it appropriately.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

            I used shopbot to cut the wax. One thing I noticed is to align the axis on the bottom left corner of the wax not on the middle of the wax. The default setting for the program is on the middle of the wax.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

            My design was a little bit bigger than the wax. I didn't know about the size of the wax before designing. I used the estimate number I got from my peers. However, it turned out that the size of the waxes are different. However, I had an idea of using scotch tape for the edges since all the cuts for the letters are usable.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

            Another problem that I encountered is with gluing. I glued the whole wax. However, it was very difficult to detach it from the wood plate. The best way I think is to wax on the edges a little bit. So that it is sufficient to hold the forces of the shopbot and be able to be detached easily.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

             Interestingly, my scotch tape strategy seem to work perfectly. It was able to hold OOMOO liquid. I mixed OOMOO half and half. However, I tried it twice and used old OOMOO that was previously created from other people. The ones with previously created OOMOO seem to create many bubbles and create a poor quality mold. I used new OOMOO to create a better quality mold.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

I mixed hydrostone with water to make mold.

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

                                                                                    

I waited to for a few hours to dry and first it looked like the hydrostone was too waterly but it turned out to be okay. one mistake that I made when I was making the design is that I didn't think about the bottom part because it would have been nicer if the mold could stand on it's own. I think that would have been cool!!