Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
naked abandon
Miru Kim. Images from her Naked City Spleen series
See her website and her TED talk for yourself. Breathtaking.
bits for Rosanna
Here's an update of what I've been up to:
Learning Rhinoceros
Rubber duck tutorial
Tower of Samara, thanks to Gabe
Baptistery in Florence
Figuring out how I will cast/make molds
Starch 3d printer in the shop isn't operational (surprise!) so I tried the casting wax process on these babies (though not ideally shaped to be molds) to roughly see how the paraffin will react to the starch as a mold material.
The Vs mark the sides I smeared with vaseline, hoping the wax would more easily slip away with a little lube.
As you can see it didn't really make a difference. This might be due to the odd internal voids in the make-do forms... the wax ended up interlocking in a way that it probably won't in my objects. Still, I thought I'd be able to kind of break off pieces here and there but the wax was too tightly bound to the mold. There was one small thin sheet of wax (from sloppy pouring) that slid off a very greased surface so that was a bit promising.
Most molded candle-making requires the use of a mold release agent to separate candle from mold- usually a silicone-based spray, though vegetable oil spray can be used as well. With this in mind I tried again, this time in a more regularly shaped mold- paper coffee cups- and with olive oil as another lube option.
They were left overnight at room temperature. None of them came out at first. The little bore holes on top are from me trying to push them out with a pen. I put them in the freezer for around 5 minutes and then tried again. All of them slid out well enough with a bit of pressure. The olive oil had the nicest surface finish, though not by too much.
I'm still unsure of how to go about doing this project. I like the paraffin enough as a material- its soft white colour (was hoping it would be more translucent/clear but whatever), odourlessness (will take scent without interference), easy workability (low melting point and not too toxic as far as I know)... and it's relatively cheap. I just hope I can make a decent mold for it.
Learning Rhinoceros
Rubber duck tutorial
Tower of Samara, thanks to Gabe
Baptistery in Florence
Figuring out how I will cast/make molds
Starch 3d printer in the shop isn't operational (surprise!) so I tried the casting wax process on these babies (though not ideally shaped to be molds) to roughly see how the paraffin will react to the starch as a mold material.
The Vs mark the sides I smeared with vaseline, hoping the wax would more easily slip away with a little lube.
As you can see it didn't really make a difference. This might be due to the odd internal voids in the make-do forms... the wax ended up interlocking in a way that it probably won't in my objects. Still, I thought I'd be able to kind of break off pieces here and there but the wax was too tightly bound to the mold. There was one small thin sheet of wax (from sloppy pouring) that slid off a very greased surface so that was a bit promising.
Most molded candle-making requires the use of a mold release agent to separate candle from mold- usually a silicone-based spray, though vegetable oil spray can be used as well. With this in mind I tried again, this time in a more regularly shaped mold- paper coffee cups- and with olive oil as another lube option.
They were left overnight at room temperature. None of them came out at first. The little bore holes on top are from me trying to push them out with a pen. I put them in the freezer for around 5 minutes and then tried again. All of them slid out well enough with a bit of pressure. The olive oil had the nicest surface finish, though not by too much.
I'm still unsure of how to go about doing this project. I like the paraffin enough as a material- its soft white colour (was hoping it would be more translucent/clear but whatever), odourlessness (will take scent without interference), easy workability (low melting point and not too toxic as far as I know)... and it's relatively cheap. I just hope I can make a decent mold for it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)