Originally shared by James Newton
Made some progress today on casting small #Glowie parts with LED lighting. A 3D printed mold of a skull and #InstaMorph (thank you @Travis_Good ) low temperature thermoplastic. Lessons learned today:
- Thermoplastics want to stick to each other. PLA and InstaMorph are both thermoplastics. It takes /hours/ in hot water to pick Instamorph out of a PLA mold.
- There is this thing called a “release agent” which keeps the mold from sticking to the material being cast.
- Plastic cooking wrap makes an acceptable release agent for PLA molds. There may be a better one, but that’s what I had available.
- If you fail to pull the InstaMorph back out of the mold before it hardens, you probably can’t pull it out at all. Luckily, you can just dump the entire thing back in hot water and melt the InstaMorph again.
- If you are going to put TWO LEDs in the back of a Glowie, be sure they are both oriented with the long lead the same way. :sigh: “Luckily, you can just dump the entire thing back in hot water and melt the InstaMorph again.”
Eventually, I had a pretty good looking skull with glowing LED eyes.
TODO:
- Find a better release agent so that the wrinkles in the plastic wrap don’t get on the part you are casting.
- Make another mold that isn’t as deep so less plastic can be used and it will release easier.
- Make molds of other shapes
- Maybe try a silicone rubber mold? E.g. #3dprint the actual object, then make a flexible silicone mold of the object, then use that to make the InstaMorph castings.
