Appearance
Molding and casting
Design and produce a mold
Fusion 360 was used to design the a dog coin mold as below.
Open the stl file with MODELA PlAYER 4.
Then adjust the cutting parameters.
The toolpath can then be generated.
The rough cutting result can be seen as photo below, then change to a 1mm cutter for fine milling and repeat the steps above to get a fine wax mold.
Molding and casting
Use the wax mold to produce a silica mold, first we need to weight the silica gel and curing agent to make sure they are in right proportion(100g:2g).
Stir it for approximately 1 min and pout it into the wax mold.
Then a silica mold can be attained.
Using epoxy resin for the casting, remember to make sure the right proportion with electronic scale.
Some Interesting Work - Make A Table with Molding and Casting Technic
We have an very large natural board in our lab and we plan to make a tea table form it with epoxy.
This broad was first polished using a sander, the border mold was made by tape the wood with paperboard on a lager foam broad then epoxy resin were fill into the mold.
At one edge of the wood broad, there is a big gap between it and the foam base, so we use tape the seal the gap. Foam balls and glue were also used to seal the gap.
Paperboard was used to form a curved boundary.
We have also using laser cutting made some acrylic letters, beside one of the electronic board was placed inside the resin.
At current stage the border is already removed, but the board still need further polishing.
Lesson learned: Don't use tape to make your mold border and make sure there is no leak point, otherwise it will turn into a disaster when you pouring the resin. The epoxy was add layer by layer, unfortunately the resin leak out when we try to add a third layer. Sad news, now our floor is ruined.
