Molding and Casting

Group Assignment:

• Review the safety data sheets for each of your molding and casting materials.
  • Then, make and compare test casts with each of them.
• Compare mold-making processes.

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 toolpath.
  • Use it to cast parts.
• Extra credit: Use more than two mold parts.

What to Make a Mold Of?

I decided to make a mold of myself. I 3D scanned myself using our Einstar 3D scanner with some help from my instructor. After scanning, I had this:

But there were holes everywhere, so I needed to process the file. I used these settings, and then I had this:

A whole lot better, right? Anyway, the next step was to make a mold.

Mold Making

This was really confusing. It wasn’t that it was really hard, just kind of hard to wrap my mind around it. I started by adding these two cones to the back of my head so the mold could actually function as a mold.

Now, this next part was quite a headache. It was hard trying to find a method that worked. First, we tried just cutting my head in half and making the mold around it. I made a simple mold in FreeCAD and then imported it into Blender, but after a while, we realized that since the two halves were different and one was larger, it would be quite hard to get them to line up properly. After some brainstorming, we decided to try making a negative of the mold and then intersecting that with a cube to create the mold for the mold. And that is where I currently am.