Molding & Casting

Group Assignment

We looked at some samples from previous years, of both milled molds and printed ones.

Then we also went over the safety sheet.

And learned a little about the basics of CNC milling.

Deisgning the Mold

I designed the holders on Rhino, iterating with GH. Eventually I landed on a pretty simple deisgn, feering some of the patterns might not come out well in casting. The mold design was trickier than the deisgn of the candle holder itself, especially since I tried nesting one mold in the other - so that was a fun little challenge. Here is the Rhino final model, and here are some screenshots:

Then I designed the mold for it, 3d printed it and poured in the Oomoo.

I used the architecture workshop's Bambu printers and their native software ("Bambu Studio") to fine-tune the slicing definitions and add a brim.

And left it to work its magic.

Lastly, when it was ready, I mixed the Oomoo 1:1 and poured.

Pouring

Pouring the Drystone was tricky because even though I made a thin slit for air to come out, it wasn't enough and I had to hammer the wooden plates holding the mold, and press the flexible mold to make air out of the pouring hole while pouring. I also had to make the mixture very watery.