Project 7 & Project 8: Molding
These projects were two halves of the same thing: Project 7 was to design and 3D-print a mold, and then Project 8 was to use the mold to cast something out of two-part silicone rubber. This was also a group project, so I worked with another student.
Design
We started off with a lot of different ideas on what to mold - a phone stand, a bracelet, a coffee sleeve, a pencil grip, or a headphone holder. We both thought the headphone holder was the best idea, and after sorting through a few different designs settled on a bow-tie shape for it.
After that, we had to design the part and the mold in SolidWorks. We tried unsuccessfully for a while to work with the Mold Tools add-on, but eventually we had to model the mold manually. Thankfully we could reuse the sketch from the part model, so it was fairly simple.
Fabrication
From here, we had to wait a week for our mold to print. After that, we went into the lab, poured the two-part silicone into the mold, and let it cure for twenty-four hours.
I'm very happy with how it turned out!