casting – mind.dump()

Not so long ago I published a blog post showing how I make silicone components. If you haven’t read it I recommend you go through it first. I won’t cover all the steps for making the components — I will just discuss the game-changing improvements in my setup.

You might be asking what might be such a game-changer that it deserves a separate blog post. Previously, I designed open molds and pour silicone into them. Now I have found a way how to inject the silicone into a closed mold.

Injecting the silicone makes the whole process faster, cleaner, and also, more reliable (no more trapped bubbles!). On top of that, it allows me to design more complex molds which can, e.g., make removal a much more pleasant process.

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I use my beloved 3D printers Elegoo Saturn and Mars to produce various functional components. However, resin is usually not the ideal material for me as I need stronger, less brittle or flexible components. Therefore, most of the time I print molds and cast my components either out of polyurethane or silicone.

Let me show you the easier of the two – silicone molding – in this post. I will demonstrate it on piece I designed last week – the cleaning kit for Elegoo Saturn’s resin vat.

The component

Swapping resins is not a pleasant experience. Evertyhing that touches resin becomes sticky and potentially iritating for your skin. On Mars, I bought multiple 6 vats and avoided swapping resins if possible. However, Saturn vats are not available for purchase yet.

The design of the vats is not ideal for pouring – it does not feature a single sharp pouring edge which does not drop. Instead, if you pour the resin, it will flow on the outside walls of the vat, making it messy. So there is the obvious solution – let’s attach a spout that will direct the resin and also, it will feature a sharp pouring corner that does not allow the resin to flow on the walls.

So I sat and designed such a thing: