Week 12

Molding and Casting

The objective :

This week assignment is designing a 3D mold, machine it and then cast parts of it.

Tools :

A.Designing (1st attempt) :

As usual the firs t steep was designing I decided to make a simple mold using Tinker Cad so I made a 2D design then I extruded the exterior sides to have the mold frame. Then I imported the file to ArtCam and finalized the design and then imported to the machine and start cutting but unfortunately the first design doesn't work due to the size converting process in Art cam.

Final design befor exporting file to Art Cam (download .STL)

This video shows how did I finalized the design before sending it to CNC

B. Mold Execution:

1) We used Our big CNC machine due to a technical issues with the small one therefore  we made a very tight wooden holder to use it for aligning and holding the wax for perfect cutting.  

Wooden Holder

2)The following video shows the wax cutting process

C.Designing (2nd attempt) :

The result was not good enough to make the molding as shown in the image below and thats why I made another design but this time using Art cam itself inorder to save time and avoid repeating the same mistake.

The New design (STL Download 

D.Molding :

For the casting I used Liquid Silicone Rubber RTV2.It comes into two septate Parts (A&B) that need to be mixed in equal proportions.

To have the exact amount of filling materials I filled up the wax with water, then I measured the amount of water that used to fill the wax with, after that  use the same amount from the Liquid Silicone Rubber materials to make my mold.

Liquid Silicone Rubber RTV2 with my mold  before mixing

The silicone mixed into the mold and here is the result after about 10 hours

To have the exact amount of filling materials I used the same method that I used in molding. Here I used resins Amazing Casting Resins,It also comes into two sprat Parts (A&B) that need to be mixed in equal proportions as well.

Her is My final result Please check the youtube video below.