Week 7

Molding and Casting

This week we worked on molding and casting techniques. I am working towards my final project bit by bit, so I designed the kids shoe sole in two parts for molding with flexible silicone. The upper sole part consist the curvature of the feet, and the under part consists of the PCB inner surface.

I used Rhino for cutting the model to two parts and modify the structure to two seprate parts. Thanks to Calvin (!) we spend our time together to arrange the milling file, and we worked on the CNC for two seprate wax blocks (thanks to Kim for giving me his unused part!!)

For prepering the gcode, We worked on three toolpaths, where we used two 1/8 inch inmill flat and 1/4 inch for the finishing part.

We prepared the wax block and marked the middle part, for accrurate, and modified X,Y,Z to zero starting point.

Working workflow for milling rough edges plus finer detail for smoothing the wax surface

The result of the two wax milled

funny curly waxed hair I kept some for re-melting :)

OOMOO time! (or as desicribed by Zach and Kim - OHH NOO time) Here i'm trying to solve the bubble trouble by dropping the wax vartically to allow the inner bubbles to pop up (for 20 min!)

Taking the OOMOO mold out, and preparing for the next molding step with my two parts.

Next, Bo suggested me to use her Sorta-Clear 12 for my flexible shoe sole, so i can try to make it fit to the flexiblity i needed (Smooth-On Product). Thanks Bo for this help :) in my case, it turned out a bit weird and sticky (not sure why, I think it the proportions weren't currect!) I will make another try soon.

At the end, it turned out a bit weird and sticky (not sure why, I think it was my mistake with the proportions that weren't currect!) I will give it another try soon. meanwhile, this is the small shoe prototype