Molding and Casting

This week’s assignment was to make a mold and cast them using different materials.

Design

I designed a two-octave piano keyboard in Onshape. This weekend, I went to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where Mitsuko Uchida performed Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor Concerto). Inspired by this, my keyboard has the E♭4, G, and E♭5 keys pressed to represent the opening E♭ major chord played by the orchestra.

Milling

I exported my design as a .stl and prepared the toolpath for my design. As my design was relatively simple, this was a straightforward process. With the toolpath, I then had the machine mill my design into the wax.

Molding

After my design was milled, following the safety guidelines, I poured the Oomoo (silicone mold) into my wax.

I let the Oomoo settle overnight, and the result was a very nice mold!

Casting

I casted my design using three different materials: 1) drystone, 2) hydrocal, and 3) metal. With the drystone, I did not mix enough water, and, as a result, my design had a lot of air bubbles in it. Thus, when I mixed the hydrocal, I made sure to add more water, and the result has significantly less holes. Finally, the molten metal resulted in a pretty good result, however, there are some very large air bubbles on the G key. Overall, I am very satisfied with my final products.

From top to bottom, the image shows the metal, drystone, and hydrocal casts.