This week the exercise was about designing a 3D mold, machine it, and cast parts from it. Here is the link to see the details
When Neil explained the assignment for this week, we already have an idea of making a CUBEchess based on the characteristic of all the pieces and how they move on board. but as it consume a lot of material and in order to use our resources together in order to be able to create our own individual designed chess out of Metal, together with Moritz Begle we made the whole Chess.The base had been engraved with the lasercutter and varnished. Here is the link to download CHESScube file.
we started working with the design (in Rhino 3D Modelling software), that is based on their characteristics, steps and movement, you can see the difference in terms of size of all the pieces.
We put all the pieces together in one mold and we suppose to leave 5 mm difference at bottom and top but the WAX we got was 35mm so we left 5 mm at the bottom and for top we had to make frame so we have some extra material in Silicon to hold the material and one more important thing is that to have a 15 degree angle (this is the ideal angle but we kept 10 degree and it worked as well) walls around so that you can release the Silicone easily out of the mold.
In order to cast from Metal, we need to create two molds:
First is the counter mold, which is out of WAX that we milled with Roland Modela machine and we used 1/8 mm flat-end bit for both roughing and finishing as we didn’t have so much of small details. Once the counter mold is ready, we made a negative mold from which we were casting with Metal and in order to cast from the Metal, we used Mold MAX 60 Silicon as it is the only one that resist heat up to 300°C. Parts A & B were mixed 100A:3B by weight. Pot life is 40 minutes and Silicon cures in 24 hours. Once this mould is ready we put some Talc powder to dust Mold in order to reduce surface tension, which enables the metal to flow evenly around the mold surface.