Frank
Thank you for joining us.
This is episode 34 of Amateur 3D Podcast, a podcast by amateur printers for amateur printers, where we share our thoughts and experience.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy’s on a train.
That’s Andy Cottam, for those of you who have not been paying attention
Chris
On a train.
Andy
And so if you hear me drop out, I’m currently on Amtrak at the moment, that’s why I might randomly disappear if I lose cell service, or have crappy audience, so I apologize for anybody who has a difficulty understanding me at all.
Frank
Well,
Chris
you didn’t want to talk about this topic anyway.
Frank
I put you at the end of the list just in case I need to cut you off anyway, Andy.
Chris
Oh, that’s good to hear, I’m glad I’m being thought of.
Frank
Did you work on anything this week, Andy?
Andy
Me?
I did.
I did.
I uh, let’s see, I got some adapters printed for my fish tank, some barbed adapters, and they worked pretty good, except the barbed part of the tubing just isn’t working as well as I would like.
It’s either not enough resistance in the pipe that it makes the seal, or it’s too much resistance in the pipe that it tears the silicone coating around the 3D printed part.
So, I just can’t really get it to work right, and I think I’ve finally given up here.
I’ve asked Kev until print one of these for me in SLA, and as soon as I get to evaluate how well an SLA prints this kind of component, I think that will determine whether or not I go to the wife asking her if I can purchase the SLE printers.
I’m gonna kind of work on that, I believe, because Kev’s been nice enough to print them for me so far, and looking at his pictures, they turned out beautiful, so I’m really excited for it to be honest.
Frank
Good deal.
Chris
Which tells you one of the things Kev has been doing this week.
Kevin
Yep.
Frank
Yeah.
Have you done anything else, Kev?
Kevin
Yeah, so I finished printing the dice tower on the FDM printer, and after last week’s episode, I looked at the mini figures that I printed for my friends and saw that there were a few places where they failed, the parts were flat on them, and so I reprinted those and had much better success.
With the things that Andy had me print, though, I did notice that, so I tried one at a 45 degree angle with supports, and I tried another one without supports, and the one without supports worked out great.
I mean, they both worked very well, but there are no little bumps or deformities on the one that had no supports, but I did notice a small hole at the shoulder of it, but I was able to put just a little bit of resin into the hole and then cure it with a handheld black light before putting it in the curing station to cure even further, so I got that all patched up, and I think it will probably, hopefully anyway, do what Andy wants it to do.
Frank
That is one thing about FDM printers that is a little more complex.
I mean, you could get one of the filament pens and touch up stuff like that, but otherwise, I can imagine somebody’s probably sitting there with a lighter and a little piece of filament warming it up and trying to stick it in a hole real quick before it dries, or cools off.
Chris
I wouldn’t do anything of the sort.
Frank
Why do I not believe you, Chris?
Chris
Really though, if you get a little bit of resin, you can still save your FDM prints in the same fashion that Kevin just described.
There’s that.
Andy
So is there just a possibility, Kev, that that component needed to be designed slightly different to be able to function a little bit better with SLA, and that’s why it’s what caused the hole?
Kevin
No.
I think what caused the hole is that I have a bargain basement SLA printer, so it doesn’t always work the best, and it just randomly will get small imperfections like that.
I’m sure if I were to print it the exact same way, if there was a hole, it would probably be in a different location.
There may be no hole at all.
It all just depends on the luck of the print.
Frank
Well, an FDM has a lot of luck tied to it quite often too, so sometimes temperature variations and all kinds of stuff will mess with it.
Kevin
Yeah, I mean
Andy
just having you see that the same effort that I put into making it not require support for the FDM was also able to support this SLA print, that’s cool.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
Kevin
Yeah, that was really cool.
Frank
Is Andy breaking up for you guys as bad as he is for me?
Chris
Yeah.
So it’s Andy.
So anyway, we’ll just continue, but that is really cool, you know, that it was able to translate across like that.
Kevin
Yeah.
And speaking of the luck of FDM also, my older son’s birthday party was last night.
He had his friends over and one of them was admiring all the things that I’ve printed and he commented that he can’t get anything to print on his FDM printer.
So I asked him a few questions like about bed leveling and whatnot and he said that he just uses the auto leveler, but the problem he’s experiencing is that the carriage goes all weird.
He can’t ever get anything to print successfully.
So I didn’t have much time to talk to him though, because obviously he wasn’t there to talk about printing stuff and it’s my son’s party.
So I just let it be, but I thought it was odd that he’s having that.
So I wanted to ask him what kind of slicer he’s using and see if it’s an issue with his settings, but I didn’t get around to that.
Frank
Well, I can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t be a resource for him if only because if you run into something that you can’t help him figure out, you’ve got three other people that have some experience that could help him too.
Kevin
Sure.
Sure.
So I was actually planning on having my son tell him about the podcast and let him know that if he’s ever got any questions, we’re always happy to help.
Frank
Well, and this might be a good way to get someone to reply to us and say, Hey, you want to talk about this?
I don’t understand this problem.
Everybody’s welcome to do it.
Just nobody does.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Um, yeah, that’s fun.
Otherwise, your son have a good birthday party.
Kevin
Yes, he did.
Frank
Good.
That’s always nice.
My birthday is coming up on Monday.
The extent of my fun on my birthday is I’m not going to work.
Kevin
Nice.
Chris
That’s more than a lot of people do actually.
Frank
That’s the grown up way to celebrate your birthday.
Right.
Kevin
Right.
I refuse to work on my birthday.
I always take it off.
Chris
I never work on my birthday.
There we go.
Frank
So Chris, have you worked on anything this week?
Um, no, so my child also has a birthday this week.
So I spent a lot of my week taking care of that, but I did get a new controller grip printing last night because, uh, you know, one of those joy con grips for the Nintendo.
The wife had some purple plastic from Christmas stuff and she goes, I want my own, my own grip.
And I said, okay, so got that going right now.
Frank
Sounds good to me anytime you end up with a, the plastic or the, the design, once you’ve already done it, it’s like, yeah, whatever you want, we can customize it for you.
Um, so was that it then?
Just the grip?
Chris
Yep.
Just a grip.
Frank
Um, I guess that leaves me, I actually spent all week working on those blocks, um, finally got one that is tight in both the top with the superstructures and on the inside.
So that, um, they hold on to the existing blocks the way they’re supposed to.
And they interact with each other the way I expect them to as well.
So I’m going to start pushing, uh, different colors of those out and taking them to my mom and dad’s.
Chris
Um, you’ve been being a blockhead all week.
Frank
Um, yes, you got me, Chris, um, I did find, um, Andy replied to it, but I did find an interesting way of finishing, uh, 3D printers, um, there’s the, uh, the card, what are they called?
Uh, card seal that, um, carpenters use to take off a little bit more material at a time instead of doing the, uh, sandpaper.
And, um, one of the, this video I saw, this guy was using that to smooth out the layer lines and to hear him talk about it, it only took him 10 minutes to do this part, whereas earlier revisions of the part took him an hour to get as smooth as he wanted him to be.
And that included things like, uh, sand paint, sand, and, um, just a regular surface sanding.
So, So, well, uh, what I wonder is I was seeing a technique where a guy would take, uh, the UV resin for resin printers, and then he would kind of paint over his paint over the layer lines instead to smooth them out and then cure him in a station.
So I wonder if he would have a comparison on that also, you know, additive smoothing rather than subtractive smoothing.
Frank
Um, well, and more often than not, when I have the layer lines, it’s on the outside anyway, so it’s not going to really change the parameters, um, not too much.
I do think, um, as I’m getting closer to finishing these blocks, I do need to change that outside parameter a little bit so that they’re a little tighter, but not, um, not a super lot, not a ton.
Um, and I had…
Chris
It’s a good thing, you’re working with the big blocks and not actual Lego blocks cause, oof man, those things are so tight.
Frank
And at that point we’re talking 10 layers maybe, for the Legos, um, and at that point I would probably just use a super high grit anyway, but I did buy some of the, uh, the card steel shavers and, um, just because I see myself using them in the wood shop if they don’t work out for the plastic.
So I’ll keep those in mind, um…
Chris
Yeah, let me know how they, let me know how they really work and if they’re, if they’re a good tool, I want to get in on those.
Frank
I imagine your father-in-law has got an opinion about it too.
Um, they are described on Amazon as, what are they, uh, uh, cabinetry, uh, card shavers I think was the name for him, um, so because he, he’s a carpenter, but not necessarily with a, a focus on the cabinetry, it may not be as appropriate, but he may already have some too that he can show you how they work.
So either way, uh, yeah.
So other than that, just in case our listeners haven’t guessed yet, Andy fell out, um,
Chris
not, he didn’t fall out of the train.
He just fell out of the podcast.
Frank
Right.
Well, yeah.
Kevin
At least we assume he didn’t fall out of the train.
Chris
We don’t really know that now.
Frank
Yeah.
Because he doesn’t have the signal he can’t tell us that he didn’t fall out of the train.
He may have, um, though I doubt it.
He’s smarter than that.
His wife on the other hand…
No, I shouldn’t say that.
I’m going to cut that out.
Kevin
And modern trains have…
Chris
I was like, you don’t give her enough credit, man, you should see the cosplay she comes up with.
She’s, she’s just as smart as he is, just in a different way.
Frank
She is very clever.
Yeah.
Kevin
Um, and I was going to say, modern trains have all kinds of safety features that prevent you from, you know, even opening the door while the trains in motion.
Frank
That’s true because people are stupid.
Chris
Yep. Gotta prepare for the stupid.
Frank
Um, so we’ve got a topic this week.
It is molds and material for casting.
Chris
Okay.
Yeah, some material for casting, but they’re all in my tackle box.
Frank
The old, uh…
Kevin
we’re, we’re not talking about aspergillus or penicillium either.
Chris
That blue thing in the back of your fridge, because you forgot, haven’t cleaned your fridge out for two years.
Yeah.
Not, not that kind of mold, but really though, um, you can use, uh, you can melt down, uh, casting sinks to, to four, four molding.
You can, you can melt those down for that.
Frank
If you want to cast something out of lead, um, and I guess technically your fish hooks would probably melt down relatively easy.
Wouldn’t they?
They’re not like, they’re not like steel.
Are they?
Well, I guess it depends on the hook too.
Chris
Yeah.
Um, but whatever you do, if you want to keep your catch, don’t 3D print fish hooks.
Frank
No, no, there’s not a lot of tensile strength and something small enough to catch your little pond fish.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
I say little, but I mean anything smaller than a foot long.
Kevin
I’d say anything smaller than a foot long is small…
Frank
Minnows.
You might be able to catch minnows, but you wouldn’t be using a hook for that.
You’d be using a 3D printed basket.
So…
Kevin
right.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Um, there was one thing we have kind of talked about.
Past medium casting in the past, but, uh, another thing that comes to mind is the, uh, vacuum, or yeah, vacuum molding.
You can use the vacuum process to make a mold out of a 3D print and then, you know, mold plastic inside of that afterwards.
Chris
Right.
So I guess it depends on what type of medium you’re thinking of casting.
Are you thinking of casting, you know, a metallic thing like out of aluminum or lead or are you just doing a silicone mold?
You know, there’s very different ways to use the 3D prints to do, to do said molding.
So, um, I know I’ve talked about my buddy before, um, and he did casting out of aluminum, but he did what was called the lost, he did the last medium method, but he basically got himself a little stand with a piece of wire between two posts and then he ran current through it so that the wire would get hot and then he would take pieces of foam from just wherever packing from, from packages or whatever, and he would just use the foam and that hot wire to cut whatever shape he wanted and then he would pack that down in some, in some casting sand and pour molten aluminum in and it would just basically vaporize, vaporize the foam and replace it.
And you can supposedly do this with a lot of different things.
You can use wax, you can use some people have tried plastic, but apparently plastic doesn’t work as well as you’d think.
Um, and…
Frank
I do suspect the plastic would leave more ash, whereas the, uh, the styrofoam or urethane foam, whatever, um, I think would be le… well, maybe urethane foam now that I think about it would leave more stuff inside of the mold too.
Just regular styrofoam from your, uh, from any package that you get or something like that.
Chris
It’ll vaporize almost instantly with any sort of heat, but…
Frank
you breathe on it just right and it almost vaporizes.
Chris
So, you know, the, the, the urethane foam did work well anyway, um, especially because sometimes you have to pack the sand kind of tight to get it, to get a good mold.
Frank
And you don’t necessarily want to compress it.
If you can help it, yeah, that makes sense.
Chris
So, but, um, if you’re going to use this method and you can’t, you can’t find a, a shop or something locally to get you quote unquote casting sand, what you can do is you can get a bunch of, um, basically you can make a sieve for yourself to, and you can use just any sort of sand or dirt-ish usually it’s not, it’s just as easy in our area because we have a lot of sand, like most of the dirt around here is sand because we’re in a desert.
Frank
Well, because we’re in a lake bed, but yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
So basically you can just do layered, layered sieves.
So kind of like, uh, I don’t know if you guys have seen any archeology digs where they, you know, they take up a screen and they shake it through.
So you have a series of screens, one above the other, and each with a finer, uh, set of holes in each one so that till, till, so at the very bottom you’ve got the finest set of holes and then you’ve got your bucket or whatever you want your casting sand in.
And you have them up, up all on these racks and then you just have that rack mounted to the, the end of a motor and then the other end of the motor that’s got the pulley on it.
You just run the motor with a counter, counter, yeah, a counterweight on the pulley so that it shakes.
Right.
And so the whole thing shakes.
So all you have to do is put dirt in the top and then clean out the trays.
Frank
Well in the, they actually use the same process with just regular construction, they’ll break it down on site and send the different materials to different, uh, locations to be processed and sold that way.
But I’ve also seen like a, what is it on the Discovery Channel with the gold, uh, gold folks up in, uh, I think it’s Alaska where they find these big areas and they just sieve through the dirt and they’ve got big shakers to separate everything and all that.
Um, I was thinking it might be interesting to create at least the larger sieves with the, the, the larger holes out of thermal plastic and manually shake it.
Would it be more like the old, uh, gold rush days where you got the big pan with holes at the bottom, but that would still be cool.
Chris
Well, yeah, I mean, and there’s a lot of, a lot of ways to get different, uh, get these kind of screens, you know, got a couple of different kinds of window screens from his local hardware store.
Frank
Just, uh, stick them on a frame and do it that way.
Chris
Yep.
Frank
Um, yeah.
Just the old way actually works better.
Use it.
Right.
Chris
So anyway, yes, there’s that way, um, to get some casting sand, you know, and, and use the lost medium method that way, uh, otherwise you can, uh, hop online and do a search for casting sand, casting materials and that’s for, that’s for, uh, aluminum and lead casting.
So
Frank
Yeah.
And as you get to the, the metals with the higher, uh, temperature ratings, you don’t necessarily want sand anyway.
Yep.
So that isn’t unless, of course, you know, you want glass on the outside or whatever you cast could be interesting to do that too.
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Could be like self, self enameling.
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
Okay.
So, so that’s the, uh, the metal casting.
Um, I think more popular though is the silicone.
Yeah.
Um, and the vacuum molds probably be more useful for stuff like that.
Create the negative with a 3d print and then use that to, to do the rest of your casting.
Um, I did just remember, uh, my conversation with my cousin, uh, episode three or four where we were talking about he, what they do at his job is they actually will create the mold out of concrete and you know, out of the hole, they’ll melt whatever thermal plastic they put in it to get the void.
And then they’ll put the, uh, the metal, the molten metal inside it.
And then once that cools, they just break the concrete off it.
So that’s not really a reusable mold.
It’s just a, a more desirable way than 100% reductive, um, machining.
So yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, you know, when it comes to business, they’re always finding the path of least resistance and most.
Frank
That’s true.
So, um, and honestly, that’s part of why we don’t try to do this professionally ourselves anyway is.
We like wasting time on stupid design stuff or printing stuff
Chris
Hence the word hobby.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Kevin
Right.
Frank
Um, my cousin, I did a project for him.
I printed off a, uh, a dragon a while ago and he, the way he described it is he was doing a vacuum casting with clear resin and he used the dragons that I printed off for him as part of this thing that he was doing for his niece.
So that’s all fun too.
Yeah.
Lots of opportunities there.
Um, you do, especially when you’re, you’re using the thermal plastic to make a negative though, um, you want to have it smooth because I’ve seen a lot of videos and that sort of thing where they’ll do the casting and, um, the part that comes out will actually have layer lines in it from their FDM printer.
Chris
Huh.
Cool.
Frank
So
Chris
And like you were saying, yeah, there’s like, there’s a couple of different ways to smooth it out.
You know, you can paint over it with resin and cure it.
You can shave it.
You can sand it.
You can, um, you can heat gun it.
Frank
Yeah.
You could do that.
Chris
That’s the last one I actually recommend though, because you can deform things.
Frank
Absolutely.
Destroy your part accidentally.
Kevin
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Try not to do that.
Chris
And don’t bake it in the oven or your wife might get very, very upset.
Frank
Yeah.
Might.
Chris
Which is, which is why I want to get a little toaster oven and try for baking electronics.
I can, I can do it outside.
Kevin
I have a toaster oven that I’m not currently using.
Chris
I might hit you up for that for, for garage parts.
Yeah.
Frank
And, you know, you can throw a hot pocket in there and because you don’t care if stuff tastes like plastic, you’re good to go.
Chris
Well worse than plastic is burnt electronics.
I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled, smelled it when you get the magic smoke coming out of your electronics, but when food tastes like that, it’s even worse.
Frank
Silicon has an interesting flavor when it’s been turned into gas.
Chris
Crunch, crunch, crunch, eating microchips and microchips and salsa, yum.
Frank
I was thinking ranch, but salsa works too.
Kevin
You know, I’ve, I’ve thought about getting some of that wax resin for casting.
The problem is I don’t know what I would use it for or what kind of metal I would cast from it because I do know they used to make miniatures for Dungeons and Dragons and similar games out of Pewter is a lead based alloy.
And I’ve got some lead, but I don’t know that I really want to be playing with lead.
Frank
I like Pewter though.
Pewter is a, uh, interesting metal to, I like the aesthetic.
How about that?
The aesthetic of Pewter, I think it’s pretty
Kevin
It definitely is.
And so like, if I could find some Pewter bullion or ingots or whatever, maybe I would use that to print up some mini figures and then cast them into Pewter.
Chris
That actually is a great idea, um, cause I’m looking at the, uh, the dragon collection that my wife has and I would say, uh, somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of them are cast Pewter of some form and you know, that is really, really good looking.
So…
Frank
Um, I do find myself wondering if aluminum would be a good material for the figurines as well.
It might be, um, I don’t have a crucible that could melt aluminum, aluminum though.
I mean, and I’ve, I know they’re not that difficult to find or make.
I just haven’t had an excuse.
But then, and I was thinking of, I was thinking of doing that, but then Andy was talking about that, that, that it’s a viscous, um, metal.
And so I don’t know if it would be able to go through like the, the tinyer parts of the mini figure.
Chris
So how it works is as long as you have a couple of, it’s, it’s kind of like the opposite of her supports.
You have to have a couple of escape holes for a little bit.
And so that’s all you do is when you, when you set it in the casting, you poke a couple of escape holes in it, both in the, in the bottom a little bit and then sometimes a couple in the sides and then you’ve got the, the hole that you pour it in and in the top.
And so you get that casting done and you cut off the other three, but if you don’t give the air somewhere to go when you’re doing that kind of casting, it really screws up your casting.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
And it seems to me you would want to do that for any material, not necessarily just aluminum though, right?
Kevin
Right.
Chris
Right.
But, um, the lost, the lost wax method is supposedly the best way to, uh, do, uh, aluminum.
Frank
Okay.
Chris
Supposedly.
Frank
That’s interesting.
I have seen where, where they just create the void with whatever object and then they pull out the object while they’re, uh, they’re setting up for the casting.
Chris
Oh yeah.
So there’s that other kind of casting sand that’s a lot, that acts a lot more like, uh, you guys know that memory foam that your kids play with?
Frank
No
Chris
that’s kind of, kind of kinetic foam or not kinetics, kinetic sand.
Sorry.
Kevin
Oh yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
So there’s, uh, some casting sand that acts a lot more like that.
So what you do is you’ve got two, uh…
Frank
boxes.
Chris
Yes.
Frank
Usually what I’ve seen are just boxes.
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah, boxes you put, you put a bunch of sand in it, you put your thing in, in it, pack it down real tight, pack, pack, pack, pack, put the other box on top of it, fill it up, pack it real tight, pack, pack, pack, pack, then you pull them apart and you can take your thing out and now you have a, uh, sandcast for.
Frank
So another detail, just in case anybody hasn’t done this yet, before you put the boxes together, you want to put, um, usually what I’ve seen is talcum powder between them so that you can get the boxes back apart.
Kevin
Right.
Cris
Yeah, I was getting just the base, jist of it.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
I feel like that’s an important detail.
If somebody is though, otherwise you’re doing lost medium, whether you meant two or not.
Kevin
Right.
It does remind me, I have seen several videos from some guy, I don’t remember who, but he will, uh, either cut out of foam or 3d print or sometimes both parts for fantasy weapons.
And then he’ll do what Chris was describing there, doing the, uh, the two side casting sand, packing it down real tight, throwing the white powder on there to get them apart.
And then he’ll dump either molten steel or molten aluminum, depending on how strong he wants it to be in there and like, he’ll make chimney holes and everything.
And it’s, it’s a pretty fascinating thing to watch.
And then you get, of course, the commenters saying, this isn’t real forging.
This is casting.
I’m like, shut up.
Just enjoy the video.
It’s a cool process to watch.
Frank
Does he sell it as forging?
You know, give the title say casting.
Kevin
The title says making.
Frank
Oh, OH
Chris
Well, there you go.
Frank
Yeah.
So it is real making
Kevin
Right!
Frank
I was like, yeah, I don’t know.
I think if he was, if he was doing this 300 years ago, they would, anybody, anybody and everybody would call it forging.
Frank
Actually, um, there’s a detail I came across.
I can’t prove it or, uh, even reference where I saw it.
But if you go back far enough, apparently blacksmiths were considered more in the realm of practical, but, um, they were considered, it was considered witchcraft.
You were taking this rock that you found somewhere and heating it up and turning it into a sword or armor or something like that.
And so, um, yeah, they were in the same category as the witches, which were brewers.
They weren’t evil or anything.
They were the hats to advertise that they had beer, you know, so, um, the, uh, just the whole, uh, craftsmanship aspect, um, I have, well, we started with bronze before we got into steel, or at least that’s the more recognized, uh, progression and bronze, you don’t really cast… or sorry, you don’t forge, you cast it and then you machine it after that.
So, um, there’s no reason in my mind that a blacksmith wouldn’t know how to cast certain materials.
Obviously, they wouldn’t necessarily want it to go with, uh, um, casting steel just because of the temperatures it would take to turn it into molten steel instead of burning it off, but it’d be doable, maybe not ideal until a hundred years ago or so.
Chris
Yeah.
Well, that’s a great thing.
Almost all of our technology is we took, we took rocks and put them together in new ways to make all kinds of things that do things for us.
Frank
Yeah.
Like we put electric, put electricity through it, just a big rock that somebody found.
Chris
Yep.
Put together rocks and some tar and, and, and, uh, some dinosaur liquid together, together in a creative way.
And now we got a car that goes a hundred, you know, 200 miles an hour.
Frank
Fermented dinosaur bones.
Kevin
And then those cars also go on a different, uh, mixture of rocks and dinosaur liquid.
Right.
Frank
Except for, something tells me that tar is, uh, For the fires.
Not so much dinosaur waste.
It would catch dinosaurs for sure, but I don’t, I don’t think that it’s the dinosaur waste.
Kevin
Uh, asphalt is among the last byproducts of crude oil refining.
Frank
Gotcha.
I guess that makes sense too.
You do have to pull out the impurities that make it black in the first place.
Kevin
Right.
Those could, the tar could have been introduced after the dinosaur completely liquefied.
Frank
There’s that.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Huh.
And I am sure we will have at least one listener that will go, oil is not dinosaur waste.
And everybody else is going, I didn’t know that oil was dinosaur waste.
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
I guess it depends on the region, of course, but yeah, fun stuff.
Chris
It’s, it’s, it’s old, old, old, old, old trees.
Kevin
No, that’s coal.
Oil is indeed dinosaur waste.
Chris
Oh, there we go.
Frank
Yeah.
Okay.
So, so the way, the way you get cubic zirconians is you can press trees a lot and pass electricity through them.
Chris
If you, if, if you do it just right, they’ll grow on their own.
Uh, there’s that, which is even cooler.
But.
Frank
Agreed.
So we, uh, there was the metal casting.
Um, so what about vacuum molding?
How much should, how much experience have you had with the vacuum molding?
Frank
Absolutely none.
Chris
No.
Frank
I saw, um, uh, what’s his name from, uh, Mythbusters.
Chris
Adam Savage.
Frank
Yeah.
Adam Savage operator vacuums, uh, cast machine once I’ve seen a few videos.
So besides that…
Chris
I’ve seen one where somebody makes a Darth Vader mask.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pretty, pretty cool.
Um, hmm.
I would think though that, you know, so, so that’s really cool for doing like, um, chocolate molds.
Yeah.
Make your own custom chocolate molds, cake, cake, pop molds or whatever…
Frank
I’ve, I would expect that at least semi-often the, uh, the vacuum mold is where you’re, you’re not making a blank.
So you’re not going to, uh, make another part out of it.
The blank is actually say whatever the source is, and then the plastic gets vacuumed to it and that becomes your bucket or your tray or whatever you’re going to do with the vacuum.
Um, so you can go both ways with a vacuum molded, um, piece.
Chris
Yep.
Can easily be the negative for your final product or it can be the actual final product.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Chris
But then there’s the silicone molding, right?
So…
Frank
I haven’t done a whole lot with silicon or looked into it or anything like that.
You would be the one to ask, I guess.
Chris
It’s been on my, it’s been on my, I haven’t done it.
I haven’t seen anybody do it, but it’s been kind of on my radar because, you know, it’s one of those really cool things that you can make a lot of things with, um, silicone, especially where, um, yeah, TPU is, is fun and stuff, but it’s still a little rigid as it comes to material and, um, silicone is something that you can really make flexible.
Like, yeah, like…
Frank
For a lot of thicknesses, you can make it flexible, whereas TPU would after you get, I don’t know, five millimeters thick, um, it’s still softish, but it’s not as flexible
Chris
Yeah, semi-flexible, but not very flexible.
If you, if you fold it in half, you’re going to have that crease line in it forever.
You know?
Frank
Yeah.
Chris
So, yeah, I was thinking silicone molding would be really fun for lots of the, um, like, um, cosplay.
Cosplay is a lot of silicone molding simply because, um, you have to be, have to have flexible stuff to be able to wear it.
You have to have stuff that’s relatively lightweight.
Oh, I admittedly silicone is definitely not breathable, but…
Frank
You can get larger sizes with things like, uh, vacuum molding and even silicone, um, at a hobby level than what you can with 3D printing too.
So it really depends on, I imagine, the, uh, the size of what you’re trying to do too.
Chris
Yeah.
Frank
Like, if you, if you’re cosplaying a character with a small dagger or something, yeah, you can 3D print that or print it in parts even.
But if you get to something that’s bigger, like a sword and it, you don’t want to do it in parts, it might be better to vacuum seal it.
Chris
Yeah.
So you can print the mold in parts, click them together, and then smooth it out, make it all nice, and then, you know, silicone cast, or, well, not necessarily a sword, per se, but you know, a bigger part.
Frank
Whatever the bigger part is, yeah.
Chris
Or you can vacuum cast it at that point.
Yeah.
Frank
Yeah.
There’s that for sure.
Chris
So, definitely big on the hobby side there.
Frank
Well, I do feel like we have a much shorter podcast without Andy, um, unless you guys have something else to say, why don’t we close this up and then, uh…
Chris
Well, to be fair, we did get right to the meat this time, so.
Yeah.
Frank
Well, without you and Andy playing off each other, we don’t waste as much time there, Chris.
Chris
Ouch.
Frank
I have to dig it somebody, and because Andy’s not here to hear it, I got to dig at you.
Chris
Okay.
So I’m the secondary scapegoat.
Frank
Except for when you’re primary.
I just don’t feel like it.
My heart’s not in it today.
Yeah.
Chris
Yeah.
Kevin
Yeah.
Frank
All right.
Uh, we’d like to thank everyone for listening to the very end.
Chris
The very, very end.
Frank
If you like what you hear, please give us all the stars and subscribe.
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You can find us in our Facebook group, Amateur3DPod, or you can email us at panelists@amateur3dpod.com.
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The music in this episode was written by Kevin Buckner, and Open AI’s Whisper completed the heavy lifting for the transcripts, which you can find linked in the, in the description.
Our panelists this week are me, Franklin Christensen, and my friends, Kevin Buckner, Chris Weber, and Andy Cotta.
And until next time, we’re going offline.
Kevin
Keep your FEP tight.
Chris
We’re going to miss you five ever, Andy.
Frank
Five ever.
Chris
It’s more than four ever.
Frank
Okay.
Kevin
I got it.
Frank
Yeah.
I got it too.
It just, whatever.
Kevin
I didn’t laugh.
Frank
Yeah, me neither.