I built a lamp last week, and I’m going to cast the base of that lamp.
I again used this tiki head from Thingiverse made by Julien_DaCosta.
making mold
Making the mold is easy. I created a box that is just slightly larger than the shoulder of the tiki head, which is the orange part I printed last week. I pour oomoo around the 3D printed model inside of the box and now I have a mold for the shoulder. I suspended the model with two tongue depressors because they were what I could find nearby.
But I realized that we are supposed to make a two-part mold and learn about registration keys. So I repurposed the assignment two weeks ago and made a tiki head with a bulb in its mouth.
The 3D printer has been giving me troubles. After troubleshooting with Junchao, we figured that it might be because the tiki head was a mesh and the mold of a mold is a polysurface. Combining them together was a lot of hassle. But anyway, I managed to print two half-molds on two printers and I have to conclude that Prusa i3 is slightly more superior than Ender pro 3.
I just poured mixed oomoo into the two half-molds and got my silicone mold.
casting
Time for some casting!
I casted the lamp base first. I certainly looks good!
I did not use hydrostone and instead used Rockite. It’s a fast-setting cement. I thought that texture would go very well with tiki head! And it does!
So I casted 4 in total.
The parting line has been a headache. Once I demold after 15 minutes, I would scrape off the extra materials on the parting line. This helped a little!
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