Moulding and Casting (WEEK TWELVE: April 22)

 

What is molding and casting

 As far as my experience goes with fun times in the workshops, we used to make molds for casting using wooden patterns and the general purpose of it was to make metallic casts which were subjected to further machining purposes to give a finished shape.
Now when it comes to molding we generally referred it to the manufacturing processes for non-metallic stuff, which can be molded of course. These generally did not require any further mechanical finishing processeses once taken out of the mold.

The History

3300 B.C. - The mummy Otzi had a copper caster axe.
3200 B.C. - A very old copper caster frog found.
3000 B.C. - Middle East and India made copper caster weapons and cults.
1400 B.C. - Steel had been excavated and casted.
800 B.C. - Chinees made a casted Iron for the first time.
645 B.C. - Chinees made something called Sand Molding.
233 B.C. - Chinees poured the iron cast plowshares.
500 A.D. - India casted crucible steel for the first time.

For more details



Material Used

• Gray iron
• Ductile iron
• Aluminum
• Steel
• Copper
• Zinc

For more details



The Design (Tinkercad)

I will make a smiley face using tinker cad application by drawing a hole face on the box shape.

After merging the two shapes, the face will be shown on the box.

This final design has to have a certain measurement for the CNC to cut.







Art Cam

I need to use the Art Cam to convert the shape to be cut on the CNC.

I need to adjust the X,Y and Z for the CNC trace.

The bit will be 3mm to cut the smiley face.

This is the final shape that will be cut with the CNC.









The creation using CNC

The celicon needs to be stationary in order for the CNC to cut without vibration.

The CNC is cutting the celicon nicely and constant.

There was a hole with water inside the celicon because i did not melt the celicon well. But anyways, i have fixed the problem using a white tape.

I poured water on the shape to see the quantity.

It is 30ml + 15ml = 45ml. I will increase 5ml to make it 50 better to fill up the whole place.

Now to pour the white celicon to create the smiley face.

We need to pour slowly to avoid the bubbles which is not good.

Now it is now time to wait for the celicon to dry out.

This material is Celcon which will dry and make the wanted shape.

The Celcon dried out and gave us this shape which is the smiley.

Now, we will use the casting material and pour it inside the smiley face.

It will take 15 minutes only to dry out.

This is the result of the molding and casting. It was a fun experience and easy. We can make soaps, cake and cookies using this method.




Problem Fixing


There was a hole with water inside the celicon because i did not melt the celicon well. Since then, I have fixed the problem using a white tape.






Download Files


Smile Face

1.3mm

3mm





Casting and Molding tutorial

This is a very simple guide on how to use the CNC hardware and a software to cast and mold explained by Brian Oltrogge:-