Molding and Casting a pair of lens

For this week, I attempted cast a transparent lens for my wearable display. First I designed the lens in Fusion 360 following the tutorials from Week01.

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Save lens as STL to be 3D milled at Shopbot.

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Mill the lens mold (positive mold). Shopbot Toolpaths must be configured correctly here.

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Add Oomoo Smooth-On 15g:100g to the milled mold (to make negative mold) remove bubbles using vacuum pump.

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After a few hours, remove the negative mold from the positive mold. Next, I'll put Hydrostone SuperX 20g(water):100g into the negative mold (light blue substrate) to make a test lens.

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Here's a "lens" made with Hydrostone. Obviously not the right transparent material, but making sure I understand the procedures.

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Then, I tried PDMS Sylgard 184 (transparent polymer) to make a transparent lens. Then put it in in oven at 65C to harden the material.

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Special thanks and credit to Sean Hickey, Emily Salvador, and Tomas Vega for helping me with many steps of these processes.