Mold Done

So finally got the mold done. (the rubber mold was done on Friday actually, but need to finish the plaster hard cover on the outside.) Instead of block mold, this mold is done in a more traditional way. It costs less and more common for traditional artists. So here is a look inside of the mold:



The green part is the rubber mold, and the white part is the plaster cover to protect the rubber mold.

And here is the casting result:





Not bad IMO, except the fact that there are few air bubbles on the mold.

Random Update

Been playing around with mold making alot lately, trying to get the hanging of it before going back to sculpting. (and yes.... I spent around two weeks on it...)

Since there are some mold that I made previously and realized that I will not be using them ever again, I decided to recycle them and turn it in a new mold.


First, cut the old mold in to small cubes:


Then just mix it with some now silicon and pour it in:


Once it dries, is done. The cast turned out well, but I wouldn't recommend if you are planing to keep the mold in the long run. But very useful for making one time only type of mold.

So moving on, also tried to make a larger mold the other day, but it turned out to be a failure.

Here is the picture before the silicon been poured in:



And here is the result of the mold:



The problem? Do to the fact that the pouring path is on the side,he resin can't travel fast enough to reach to the end of the mold. Also, the air is having a hard time to escape there are alot of details involved in each parts. The correct way should be playing the pouring path in the middle of the mold, and keep the mold simple, which will result in better casting quality.


Will be going back and remake the mold soon.


And... is time for some sculpting work...!

So here is a few hour work-out for today:

Some Mold Making

Well, guess I won't be getting a new desktop for awhile...

Since I have a huuuuugeee break between my next exam, decided to make a two piece mold.
After some research, I found that two piece mold works out alot better than one whole mold in terms of pushing out air bubbles. If you don't have a vacum machine to suck out the air while casting, is better to make two piece mold than one whole mold.

Alright, so here are the pictures:

First, use super sculpey clay to make the base, so I can place on the parts. Since it won't stick on to silicon, once the top part is done, I can just pull it off and recycle it for next time.



And here is the mold:


However, the cast did not turn out good:


Mainly because of the path opening for me to pour in is too small, and the air is having a hard time escaping from the mold. So went back and fixed the mold by making a new pouring path for it.



In the picture, you can see that a new path added on the middle part, which starts from the side. This way, while pouring in the resin, the air will be pushed upward more easily and smoothly unlike the previous one, due to the fact that the path were too small for it.

And yes, the result of two seperate mold is definitely better than making one whole mold. Although it is slightly complicated, but is great way for casting if you don't own a vacum machine.

Some Casting Result

So last week's topic in my sculpting class was pour in resin in to the little mold I made two weeks ago. Since it was the first mold I ever made, there are few things didn't turn out well. The head mold didn't turn out well, however, the mold for the body turned out to be really well. So here are some pictures:

So here is the pic of the mold filled with resin, with tape wrapped around to keep the mold together from leaking...


And then take the pieces from the mold:


As we can see, the headband for the head didn't get casted properly, but the body turned out really well, except that i cut the leg too short...

So got time to play around with the mold, and somehow ended up with 5 pig heads on my table...







and with 4 bodies...



Note that some of the area didn't get casted well, especially the ears area.

However, one of the head I casted turned out good enough, just few small fix and stuff. So what I'm going to do now is going to fix up the one I'm happy with and make a new mold to fix few air bubble problems. Then hopefully I can start paint them if the casts turned out well with the new mold!

Err... Mold Making

So this week's topic in my sculpting class is about mold making, that means.... we get to make our on mold for my figures~! So, I decided to make the mold of Mr.Piggy! (Which is the starter figure in from Vance Project, click here)

The mold wax (the material for making the mold) I'm using is called Smooth-On Mold wax 40, is a type of silicon rubber, really great for mold making and no mold release agent required when removing the object from the mold. (somehow I can't find a good info page about it at this point)

So here we go:

First step, I use Mr.hobby's Casting Block to build up a wall around the parts to pour in the silicone.



Then mix up the silicone and pour it in, try to pour it from one corner, because it reduces the chances of bubbles building up around the kit. So after pouring, we have:



A block filled with silicone, which the parts inside. Note that there are bubbles flowing on top, but that's ok, because is trying to push out the air inside the mold.

And things don't always go right for the first time, same this case. Since I did not stablize the head strong enough, it started to flow while pouring...(half of the head was above the mold... looks like a man diving... with half of his head above the water) so we had to push the head down every time it starts to flow... until the silicone starts to settle.

So after 16 hours, the mold is fully dried. And guess what, the head didn't pop out!


By removing the blocks, I got...



A mold!

However, since the kind of mold I'm making only opens on one side, (so that it reduces the seam line while casting) it was pretty hard for me to take it out without breaking the parts. So this is what happened...

A mold:


With broken Mr.Piggy XD:



Which is not that bad, considering the fact that is the first time, and the mold turned out to be ok, especially for the body, and the damage is somewhat fixable.

So for next week's class, we will try to pour in resin in to the mold and cast it, hope the over all process will be a success!