Week 8 - Molding and Casting

For the molding and casting assignment I decided to use a playing card to model, the ace of spades. To create the model I decided to use Adobe Photoshop. Since the Fab Modules use a greyscale interpretation to convert a 3d model to a usable file for the modela, I decided to just skip a step and use gradients to accomplish this.

The Fab Modules software assigns black as the deepest depth, white as the top surface, and the various greyscales are used for everything in between. I first created a 5mm border and used the bucket tool to shade it black. Doing an image search I pieced and resized components from each to create the image above. I added a circular gradient to the main spade, and made the rest of the image white. Exporting the image as a PNG-24 bit I found was easily imported.

I used hot glue to fix the wax block to the moving bed of the modela, and then inserted the 1/8" end mill for the roughing and finishing passes. Below are screenshots of each.

The roughing pass took around 2 hours, and the finishing pass took about 3.

As you can see there is a large cut through part of the model. Due to the curvature of the wax around the edges the initial cut was not centered properly. I adjusted the offset and sent the file to the modela again thinking that my model was deep enough in the wax to cover this up. As you can see it did not. After the finishing pass I used some of the wax shavings to pack the error to be able to pour the silicone into it.

Using the OOMOO I mixed equal parts of the A&B in a plastic cup. Stiring vigorously for 5 min to make sure the ingredients mixed well. Then I poured the mixture onto my milled wax.

Here's how the mold came out.

Using the negative I created out of silicone I decided to cast the part with the SmoothCast 305 white plastic.

As you can see in the final result below, the imperfections in the mold transfered with each step of the process.

The final result...

Future Attempt: If I have time at the end of the program I'd like to redo this process with a minor change to my file. LEMMY!