Week 7: Molding & Casting

This week I put together a little 3D art piece by molding and casting a machined wax piece. I did greyscale to mesh conversion using photoshop on a highly cropped image. This image was of the patterns generated by a demosacing algorithm from a digital photograph that had been made by shining a laser beam onto a camera sensor.

In order to get the highest resolution I had to resize the 3D mesh to fit a 1/16" endmill. Otherwise I would have tried to make the tallest part higher. It was milled on the Shopbot and worked great.

I then made some walls and poured the silicone in. I let it de-gas under vacuum for quite a while after putting it into the mold to ensure no bubbles in the small crevices. After setting It came out great

Finally I made a final walled in mold from silicone and cast some hydrostone. I degassed some inside the mold to draw out any bubbles while jiggling it to get them free. I then placed it in a pressure chamber to compress and hopefully dissolve any remaining air back into the hydrostone. It seems to have done wonders!