13-Molding and Casting¶

Assignments¶

Group assignment:¶

Review the safety data sheets for each of your molding and casting materials
Make and compare test casts with each of them
Compare printing vs milling molds

Individual assignment:¶

Design a mold around the process you’ll be using, produce it with a smooth surface finish that does not show the production process, and use it to cast parts.

Learning outcomes¶

Design appropriate objects within the limitations of your process
Demonstrate workflows used in mold design, construction and casting

Have you answered these questions?¶

Linked to the group assignment page and reflected on your individual page what you have learned
Reviewed the safety data sheets for each of your molding and casting materials, then made and compared test casts with each of them
Documented how you designed and created your 3D mold, including machine settings
Ensured your mold has smooth surface finish, that does not show the production process (by postprocessing if necessary)
Shown how you safely made your mold and cast the parts
Described problems and how you fixed them
Included your design files and ‘hero shot’ of the mold and the final object

The road map i made for this week can be accesed here

Individual Assignment¶

This week we were tasked with making a mold with the design of a 3d tool path.

Difference
2.5D toolpath- Straight z extrusion from a design
3D toolpath - Has to have different levels of printing.

Heres a picture our teacher made for us to understand the difference of the two.

difference

Designing¶

2D design¶

First of all, I did not know about the proper requirements, so I made quite a few 2D toolpath designs. In the end i didn’t really print it because I found about the 3D toolpath requirements. Heres the designs though!

Then, I thought we needed to print the box, or needed the box with the design(not sure why, it was a dumb thought) so my designs have the box around them as well.

Even then, my 2.5D design wasn’t exactly done well either. I got the designs mixed up, so i made a border around all my designs like you normally do with a 3D toolpath. I assumed that we’d mill the 2.5D design, so i didnt end up 3d printing these designs in the end either.

both

dino

I was trying it out on tinkerCad. It was easy to use, but I was more familar with fusion so the design for this didn’t go too well either, so in the end it was a waste of time.But hey we all make mistakes.

tinkercad

I loged into TinkerCad here

3D toolpath.¶

With the whole 3d toolpath required, in the end, I made a spear. I cut it from halfway so it can be cut.

Then my local instructor told me its a bit too plain, so I added a few extra designs. They were slopy, but I was running out of time so I just went with it.

The first one went like this

coil

Then i remade the mouth because it looked out of place. I placed 2 cylinders and extruded it downwards to cut the eyes, adn followed the same steps with a triangle for the mouth.

spear2

Milling¶

The Roland SRM 20 milling machine is what we had in our lab to mill our wax boxes. The endmills we used were the 1/8” square endmill for roughing and the 1/8” ball endmill for finishing.

Roughing - Fast, aggressive cuts with a square endmill to remove most material quickly.

Finishing - Slow, precise cuts with a ball endmill to create smooth, detailed surfaces.

Steps¶

Open the app first(MODELA player4)

open app

Import the design you want to cut on the wax

import

This is how my design looks!

how it looks

Go the the tool bar in the side and click one new process

new process

Keep these settings the same

keep same

Access the roughing settings.

roughing

For the roughing settings, this is how we set it. Cutting speed: 15 mm/s Cutting-in amount (depth per pass): 1 mm Path interval: 0.5 mm

Click on next,(nothing to edit here) then finish

finish

After that, you’ll come across the height settings requirements. You can change it acroding to your design

edit

Then you do the same for finishing. When you reach this part, select ballnose.

select ballnose

As for the start height, keep it the same as the roughing file setting.

Heres a picture of the senior(past graduate of this course) who helped me

acho yangtshel

Cutting and Molding¶

Firstly we cut our design on the wax. We decided that all 3 of us would do it on one big wax so we could save the time of cutting it into smaller square pieces

alt text