molding and casting

'LIKE Button' Stamp.

STL FILES:HANDLE.STL STAMP.STL

My original idea for this assignment was to use the STL file of the pepper shaker (3d scanning and printing)  to make a second replica of the little guy, cut out his negative on the Modella from wax and cast him in silicon,,,,,,,,, but I struggled for many hours to successfully split the mesh in half for production. I tried rhino, mesh builder, vectorworks and meshlab with no success. So my second idea was insipred by Wendys example for this assignment, a stamp would be fun to make and use.

 

First I imported a EPS file into Vectorworks of the image I wanted to turn in to a stamp, in Vectorworks I then modeled and extruded it into the negative shape and exported as a STL file to run on the Modella .

We are only using wax in the Modella here, great idea as it creates very little waste if errors and old molds, models etc, can be melted down and reformed to blocks and reused

While I was waiting the Five hours for it to cut,,, (second attempt, warning dont open the door once the machine is running),

I 3D modeled up a handle and printed it out on the 3D printer.

Next I mixed up the urethane rubber in equal parts A and B, I used PMC 121/30 Dry, the Wet version releases oil to assist in release, as I’m using wax there is no need for this.

Poured carefully into mold to avoid air bubbles, then tapped on surface to make sure any bubbles do escape.

 

And now I have a new marking tool,,,,,