dualboa

Design

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After a few layers of primer coating and sanding I have a pretty clean though not perfectly smooth little forest inhabitant.

Soon ready to multiply itself with the help of some molding and casting.

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Here is the squirrel 10cm high. I’m gonna clean and sand it several times so it gets smooth and stripeless.

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Here is the printed version of my design measuring 2cm high in HD (35 micron). The mask didn’t make it even if I added some supports. It was too thin.

It’s not faithful on this picture but details are really accurate (I can easily see the smiling face) and the overall result is really impressive. I keep in mind this is the first HD 3D printed technology for consumer market.

It required a lot of testings from Damien before finding the righ speed and temperature to make a satisfying print.

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Here is a new design I made in about 20h (sculpt and retopo). My friend Damien has a brand new resin printer that can go down to 35 micron. The result is really impressive. I’ll post some pictures of the result soon.

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Here is how I’m going to paint the beast. I’ll try various designs later but this is a good start to learn how to use the airbrush.

Now all my project is virtually done. I’ll have to start making it real soon.

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I’m starting to create random shapes in illustrator. This will make stencils since a cutting machine is going to acheive the cutout.

Then I would airbrush the stencils to have a flawless design, like car painting. I don’t want something that looks handmade.

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This post has nothing to do with 3D printing, but on this matter I can only say I lost 5 months thanks to some false promises. But now I want to wait for a friend to receive a polymaker and experiment the smoothing. I won’t have lost so many time for nothing...

So let’s talk about this map as I want to share here something I made. This is going to be a panel in a park for a city next to the place I live. Nice isn’t it ?

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A few days ago I had some difficulties to explain where I’m going with 3D, silicon and airbrush... So I made this little working process to make myself clear.

More than one year later I’m still stucked between steps 2 and 3...

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Almost one year later, after several failure in my attemps to mold the 50cm wide stoat, I decided to take a step further and ask for help.

Kere Dali is going to learn me with how to mold and cast. He is a great artist who works plaster and loves this material. He finds inspiration in nature and the human figure. Here is his blog.

Then Bicephale, a printing company in Bretagne, is going to print it again (the first pinted stoat is definitely out of service) with hight quality and low price. Many thanks to them. Here is a link to their website.

This is a sample of a 7cm stoat made by Bicephale, I can’t wait to see the big 3d printing...

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Alginate

Allez un billet en français puisque finalement ici c’est ici le carnet de bord de mes essais ratés dans le domaine du moulage. Je me passerais pour l’instant de la dimension internationale du projet.

Ce week-end, j’ai encore fais d’autres essais qui bien sûr ne fonctionnèrent pas. J’ai tenté de faire un moule direct sur le modèle, tout en plâtre mais le démoulage s’est avéré impossible. Alors j’ai fait des essais de moulage avec plusieurs coques mais même résultat : j’ai du casser la coque pour sortir le modèle qui bien souvent cède. Je dois alors encore recoller ce dernier à la colle epoxy.

Donc bon, y’en a marre de chez trop marre mais je n’abandonnerai pas ce projet. Si j’arrive à égaler le résultat que j’ai en tête ce serait une telle victoire..

Je prendrais bien des cours de moulage et j’aurais certes du commencer par là mais disons qu’en essayant seule dans mon coin j’ai acquis une bonne visibilité sur ce qu’il ne faut pas faire. Pénible mais utile sans doutes.

Donc ces cours seront probablement en octobre mais ne vais pas attendre jusque là. Je vais tenter un nouveau matériau pour prendre l’empreinte de mon objet imprimé en 3D : l’alginate réversible. 

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Another success story in mistakes making. 3 more molds to be useless...

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Back to the beginning. While I was looking to buy another molding material I asked a profesionnal, Pascal Rosier to help me with the process. He is a well-known pattern maker and did a lot of videos, training courses and has a shop with unique materials such as reversible alginate.

But he just gave me some advice I carefully followed with the materials I already have to avoid extra costs :

I’ve put 3 layers of latex, each dried in a few minutes with a hair-dryer, before dipping gauze in the liquid latex and covering the entire piece. I doubted the technique but this morning I can see the result is pretty good !

I find it gives my 3D stoat a bit of an antique sculpture look due to the solidified drapery parts.

Soon comes the next step.

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The result of this silicon mold is not so bad, though very raw because the seams of the many loads of silicon soaken in water and soap can be seen. Moreover my fingers left some prints in it.

This is going to enlarge my collection of “dead cats”.

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So I have to give a new attempt to my mold making. I decided to drop the latex technique which seems to be more useful for figurine.

I ordered 1kg silicon to create a mold but that won’t be enough. Moreover I will need a thickener... just to make a first cast to be reworked to make another mold...

So I decided to put into practice the oogoo technique (soap version) I’ve tried in my previous post, with 3 silicon reloads of bathtub joint soaken in soap and water. Don’t forget to put soap and water on the model too. Now i’ll wait a couple of days.

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I’m going to try another technique but I already find new issues, here is why :

I’ve just received silicon rtv but not enough to fill this coffin I made. I will probably do the same as with the latex mold and paint some silicon all over my stoat and complete the fill with plaster again, or resin... I stil don’t know.

I knew making a mold would be the hardest part so this is the reason why I watched many videos on the matter ; but of course it didn’t prevent me from problems. 

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Here is the sad result of my latex experience.. I missed the plaster mold then unwrapped the latex mold from my sculpture. I can’t do anything with it since it’s not possible to make it fit perfectly again. It’s so blobby now.

It looks like a dead cat, seems perfect to scare the neighboor’s dogs, nothing more..

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Here is the plaster mold on top of the latex mold... It was a fail. I should have used oogoo because it crushed after dried. I won’t do it again even with a thicker plaster coat and multiple parts.. I don’t feel it.