Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
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Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#2Where can I get this?
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#3I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#4I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.
Post printing a very small amount of time with sandpaper (or acetone for certain materials) would smooth things out. It wouldn't work well for small details though.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#5Where can I get this?
It’s a research paper so most probably there won’t be any software delivered. Sadly it’s not the norm for researchers to release the code or an user-fronting application when doing computing research (or any research). Open source exist but is even rarer.
There’s dozens of very useful and advanced creation tools created in labs that never turned into usable application. In some domains big players pick up on the research and include it as a feature, but many advances just stay in labs for ever.
The rare one that are released as usable applications by the authors are most of the time not supported and end up abandoned—quite similar from many non-research software in that respect, but a little more sad as they are often more unique, like for example the free-form plush creation tool from a Japanese lab I remember from several years back.
The most irritating is when tax-money funded labs don’t incentivize their researchers to open source their code, and we end up with a innovative software tool, closed source and with proprietary licenses, that is effectively only the research playground of one researcher, mimicking a product but never really turning into a product.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#6I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.
You've got several options here, none of them great.
1) Use a resin printer and print the meta-molds at very high resolution, then lightly sand with high-grit paper or use a gap filling primer paint.
2) Use ABS, HIPS, or another acetone smoothable plastic and vapor bathe the meta-molds (would probably slightly mess up the split lines though).
3) Use a paint-on epoxy to manually smooth out the meta-mold interiors.
4) Manually sand as best as you can.
The normal process for this would be to print the 3D model you want and then do a bunch of post-printing cleanup and treatment to get it to mold-ready quality, then cast a silicone mold of that. It's not super fun, but you can get good results without years of practice.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#7I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.
You've got several options here, none of them great. 1) Use a resin printer and print the meta-molds at very high resolution, then lightly sand with high-grit paper or use a gap filling primer paint. 2) Use ABS, HIPS, or another acetone smoothable plastic and vapor bathe the meta-molds (would probably slightly mess up the split lines though). 3) Use a paint-on epoxy to manually smooth out the meta-mold interiors. 4)…
5)Have one of the $40k clip printers that don't leave the lines.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#8But 3d printing is not food safe, so using this method for chocolate molds seems unwise.
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#9But 3d printing is not food safe, so using this method for chocolate molds seems unwise.
It can be food safe. You can even print invisalign-style braces.
https://formlabs.com/store/us/form-2/materials/dental-lt-cle...
Re: Metamolds: Creating ideal 3D printed silicone molds faster and cheaper
#10I'd be concerned about layer lines ending up in my final molds. If you look closely they'll end up in your final cast repeatedly. Perhaps this would be best accomplished with a resin type 3d printer to minimize the issue.
The paper authors used FDM machines (Ultimaker 2+, a Stratasys J750, and a Stratasys Fortus 450 MC). But even the cheapest $500-ish resin printers can do 25 micron layers with 50-ish micron XY resolution and it is very very hard to see those layer lines.