Week 10: Moulding and Casting

As soon as I discovered what we were gonna do for this week Rick and Morty appeared in my mind. I decided to make Rick and Morty into matrices to make all kinds of Ricksy stuff with them (moulds and casts). I opted for Autodesk's Fusion 360 since its the software I'm more proficient in.

3D Design (Fusion 360)

Morty

1st: I aquired a cool picture of Morty and used the option:
-------------Insert>Attached Canvas>Select Morty's picture
I also scaled my canvas so that it would fit properly in the 177mm by 77mm block of wax (considering I wanted both Morty and Rick to fit on the same side to optimize the use of surface). It should look like this.(55 by 65 was my goal).

MORTY 01

2nd: Using the Spline tool I drew the outline of Morty's head and hair.

MORTY 02

3rd: I extruded Morty's face, ears and hair with different heights for it to look realistic.(hair 5mm, face 9mm, ears 8mm).

MORTY 03

4th: I used the spline tool to draw the outline of Morty's eyes, nose, eyebrows and mouth.

MORTY 04

5th: I extruded each part with different heights (dimensions shown in the pictures below) for the features to resemble Morty's face.

MORTY 05 MORTY 06 MORTY 07 MORTY 08

This is how the finished Morty looked like. (Geeeez!)

MORTY 09

Rick

(Almost the same as Morty but with more details)

1st: I aquired a cool picture of Rick and used the option:
Insert>Attached Canvas>Select Rick's picture

RICK 01

2nd: I used the Spline tool to draw the outline of Rick's head and hair.

RICK 04

3rd: I extruded Rick's face, ears and hair with different heights for it to look realistic. (hair 5mm, face 9mm, ears, 8mm).

RICK 03 RICK 05 RICK 06

4th: I used the spline tool to draw the outline of Rick's unibrow.

RICK 07

5th: I extruded it.

RICK 08

6th: I used spline to draw Rick's eyes.

RICK 09

7th: I extruded them (including: eyelids, pupils and other details).

RICK 10

8th: I used spline to draw Rick's nose and some cheek wrinkles.

RICK 11

9th: I revolved it 180 degrees.

RICK 12

10th: I extruded the wrinkles.

RICK 13

11th: I used spline to draw the outline of Rick's mouth(lips, teeth and tongue).

RICK 14

12th: I extruded/cut them as shown below(dimensions on pictures).

RICK 15 RICK 16 RICK 17

Rick Sanchez looked very nice when finished.

RICK 18

Milling

The material I used was a blue wax made for machining and hand carving from the brand Ferris.
Dimensions: 177mm by 77mm.

WAX

The milling machine we have in the lab is a Roland Modela Pro II MDX-540.

ROLAND 01

The tools I decided to use were the 1/8" flat blade for the Roughing process and the 1/16" flat blade for the Finishing process.

ROLAND 05

1st: We had to drill some aluminium plates to the Modela's wooden bed to make sure the wax doesn't move.

ROLAND 02

2nd: I set the X,Y and Z zeros using the remote (you can also use the computer software to do it.)

MODELA 01 MODELA 06 ROLAND 03 ROLAND 04

3rd: We insert the stl file into the srp software (Modela's software) and in the type of milling section select: ----------Better Surface finish, Model with many flat planes and Block Workpiece>Cut top only.

MODELA 03

4th: I selected the cutting parameters for both the Roughing and the Finishing processes from the Create Tool Path section.
Roughing parameters:
- Feed Rate: 2862.00 mm/min
- Spindle: 10000 rpm
- Cutting-in Amount: 1.38mm
- Path Interval: 1.91mm
- Finish Margin: 0.20mm

Finishing Parameters:
- Feed Rate: 640.00 mm/min
- Spindle: 11000 rpm
- Cutting-in Amount: 0.1mm
- Path Interval: 0.1mm
- Finish Margin: 0.00mm

MODELA 04 MODELA 05

5th: Started the milling process and wait 100 minutes.

ROLAND 06

I was pretty happy with the result although:
1. We set the wax slightly tilted so the milled square was slightly tilted too
2. The X and Y origin was too far to the left and towards the bottom of the milling surface.

ROLAND 07

Repeat the whole process for Rick but setting the origin 10mm to the right of Morty's square.

ROLAND 08

The finished Rick had minor problems:
1. The sharp corners between the teeth couldnt be made so they ended a bit curved.
2. The details in the eyes didn't come out complete.
Regardless I was stoked with the finished product.

ROLAND 09

Positive Moulds

In order to make the moulds I opted for the SORTA-Clear 37 Liquid Rubber from SMOOTH-ON which is perfect for making food with as it can stand up to 250 degrees Celsius.

MOLDING MOLDING 00

Next I took out the rest of the materials I needed(Gloves, Wooden sticks, scale, little glasses).

MOLDING 01

Following I poured equivalent amounts silicone from the yellow and blue jars.

MOLDING 02 MOLDING 03

After I had to mix them thoroughly for 3 minutes

MOLDING 04 MOLDING 05

Once it was uniform I put it in the vaccum pump to remove as many bubbles as possible.

BOMBA VACIO

Before I poured the mix I had to fix my little left wall problem.

MORTY SOLUTION

Finally, I poured it from about 40cm high so that the stream would be a trickle and it would generate less bubbles.

MOLDING 06 MOLDING 07

At this point I just had to wait 4 hours. The result....

MOLDING 08 MOLDING 09

Next I melted some chocolate.

CHOCOLATE

Poured it into the molds.

CHOCOLATE 01

Aaaand... Voila! Rick and Morty Chocolates.

CHOCOLATE 02

Download the original files from the links below:
Rick Design: Fusion 360 (.f3d file)
Morty Design: Fusion 360 (.f3d file)



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