Sunflower moulds

Whilst I made the mould of my chain links I also made mould of my sunflower elements.

Bowes, K.,(2021). Flower in mould.

Bowes, K.,(2021). Half flower in mould.

Flower elements

I made a mould of my large and medium flowers and started injecting wax into them. Not all the flowers came out as a full flower but that is normal with a new mould. Instead of wasting the large flower that can't be used in my original design, I started to see the flower as an element that can be broken into smaller elements instead of used as a whole. 

Bowes, K., (2021). Mould making

 

Bowes, K.,(2021). Sunflower element.

Xylem fly press

I cast one of my first 3D prints and used it as a fly press die. I think it is too big and it obviously needs to be reversed so that the pressed plate reads correctly instead of the die.

Bowes, K., (2020). Backwards fly press.

To get an impression that reads correctly I cast one of my second 3D prints and use it to redo my fly pressing. The fly pressing worked except the impression came out shallow due to the die being smaller. I chased around the impression to make it more prominent. It was interesting to learn about different types of mould making other than just silicone moulds. 

Bowes, K., (2020). Fly press with first two letter chased.

Second Print

 

Bowes, K., (2020). 3D prints.

For my second print, I kept to the oval shape as its curved shape was more appealing to me. I reduced the size and mirrored the lettering but they still don't fit together, which is frustrating as they line up exactly. I also need to consider having extra space when the male and female clip together to accommodate the metal thickness of the metal that will be shaped in the mould.

3D Prints for Moulds

  My current brief I am working with is to make a piece of jewellery using punches and a mould but not using silicon and wax injecting.

Bowes, K., (2020). 3D printed tags.

I 3D printed a male and female version of the word xylem as the starting point for making a mould. I felt lettering would be the easiest and xylem isn't a word that is heard every day. I felt that the prints were too big being 60mm long. I also felt the male and female need to reflect one another so they can clip into one another thus creating more of a punch and die set. 

Silicone molds

Looking at my crab claw I wanted to try make some silicone molds. An object like a crab claw wouldn't survive the heat used to set molds that are made in a vulcanizing machine. I wanted to make two part molds so it is easier to take the objects out of the mold as wax is injected into the mold and wax is fragile. I used clay, in a plastic container, to press my found objects into; I then poured in the silicone. Once the silicone had set I removed the clay, flipped the silicone over so the found object was facing up and poured the second half of the silicone. Silicone is made by mixing a base and catalyst, my ratio of catalyst wasn't exactly correct. The silicone set but was very soft and the clay also made the silicone very dirty which can be seen in figure 1. I ended up trying to make a solid mold and cutting it open as seen in figure 2, but I forgot to cut in a zigzag so that the mold has keys which helps hold the mold together when working with it.

Figure 1 - A two part silicone mold

Figure 2 - A silicone mold that has been cut open