3D Printed Molds For Resin Casting - Does That Even Work? 

Flexible printed molds are on the agenda. Should be fun!

Actually, this would be much easier and safer too

What brand do you use? I use water washable, but this would be incredible for simpler molds I wanted to make

@@RobertTolone Ive had reasonable success with simple elegoo water washable transparent green, its got a bit of flex in it, not glass hard like the grey. I have also been printing molds and trying to case silicone parts. I found that the resin seems to prevent the silicon from curing, I had to get some tin cure, which was not as tough as needed.

@@NicoleHam we're using a highly flexible resin rubber from formlabs.

💯💪🏼🔥

Literally what I'm looking to do, and why I'm here.

I guess the whole point of this video was to see if this step can be avoided.

I was thinking the exact same thing, Good call! 👍🏻👍🏻

Be aware, that silicone, especially the platinum based one, doesn't cure well around photoresin parts. It's called the inhibitor effect. The workaround is to use cheaper tin based silicone to make a pre-production die, cast a epoxy part in it, then use it as the original for the production dies.

I do this as well. I Have some resin mold jackets that i've made for things I commonly cast and printed mold to cast silicone molds to do resin casts. If that isn't too convoluted :P

if the mold are empty he loses the shape, here on brazil we use "gesso" idk the translation name of this

@@victorgomes5823 they call it plaster

Good to know, thanks. Zero tolerance was obviously not the way to go!

I also always use .06 to .08 mm clearance for mating parts.

@@RobertTolone You can use 0 Tolerance but at least activate Anti-Aliasing in Chitubox ( If u use it ). The AA will take a few pixels to blur them, so they will leave a tiny gap. I personally use 0.030mm of tolerance. Great Video btw.

All these measurements depend on the materials used. Some resins shrink considerably as they cure. Though this property is unpopular in 3D printing or casting.

@@asailijhijr In addition, they shrink differently depending on the geometry of the print. For example, a pin may shrink and become thinner and vice versa - the print around the hole may shrink and the hole will become larger. It depends on the wall thickness, the geometry and even the curvature of the surface.

Nobody cares about you. Go back to your cave.

Love to see you printing molds on your channel Uncle Jessy!

😄

@@PeppoMusic Well, I've only made a few, I'm still tweaking the mould design, but I don't know if the mould will ever wear out. If I'm pulling silicone parts out of a resin mould, it should last indefinitely, shouldn't it? I guess we'll see😄

⁹9⁹o 99999999⁹99999999999999⁹9999

Yup I could see myself just drilling holes in the modelling

Where can I get 3D mold files

OHHHH! THATS SMART!!!

@@AdamMclardy No need to drill, just add them to your mold halves before printing. I have a motto, drilling = failure when it comes to 3D printing. 😄

Do you print lost wax resins for your silver castings?

Hey Brookes! Yeah, it was a fun experiment. I think it could be refined to work a lot better.

@@RobertTolone those draft angles are always a challenge too. I might start designing my components with chamfers so that I'll never have to worry about air entrapment and sharp corners causing the mold to get stuck

They have more flexible resins and I believe you can mix and match so that might be one way to make things a little better.

I actually got my resin printer to make moulds, but not like this, I actually plan to make moulds for silicon moulds for resin casting.

@@myopinion69420 hmmm 🤔 one of my thoughts was to make the mould with the part joined to it using a union (boolean) operation and cast the negative if it's a one piece mould

Great tips, thanks!

My Blender knowledge is pretty limited. I use it almost entirely for toy prototype models.

That or chill the project, mold and all, for about 5 to 10 minutes in the ice box. The material difference between your mold and print medium should cause them to thermally expand at different rates. Easy pop out then.

@@jacksonfondren1656 or into hot water after is is hardened inside - should work too

Glad you find my videos helpful Nicole. I wish you great success your projects!

Mold cavity position is super important!

@@RobertTolone Different printers/resins might give different results, I have a better fit when the registration keys are downsized by .1mm diameter. Your videos have helped me a lot. Thanks for that. For anyone watching (Robert already knows I'm sure), it's easier to make a silicone mold from the prints than to cast in a resin print. Usually, Tin cure works well. I haven't had any luck using platinum cure silicones.

I have struggled to learn Blender but I’m finally getting comfortable with the modeling part. Animation, procedurals, nodes, Uvs, etc I haven’t even started on yet.

Thanks Charles!

It was a first go so hopefully I’ll get better at it!

It's quicker to make a silicone mould.

Me too, I like videos that dive right in! Thanks for subbing!

Do you use a resin printer? I want to try this but hear that silicone wont cure against resin...

@@thesouluniversal Yes, I have a resin printer and use Smooth-On products for molds and casting. There are two types of silicone for molds, tin-based and platinum based. For resin you should use Tin, and the other stuff won't cure right unless you add a bunch of chemicals.

@@badvermin Thanks for your reply, much appreciated. I heard that platinum cured silicone is better quality, lasts longer and captures more detail so have doubts about using tin-based, however it does seem to be the simplest solution...

I will try Alex, thanks!

Love you and your work Mr Crafsman. Awright. 😁😇

As with FDM printers you can do some adjustments of settings to make it very close to having a prefect accuracy. My resin printer gives me close to 0.0X accuracy but i also spend a lot of time getting my settings just right. it of course also comes down to the resin that you use, it can shrink, expand or even deform when curing. I had no problems making 2 half's of a mold that merged perfectly to form thin aluminum from a can.

Uh, actually, Crafsman I HAVE been doing computer design since Windows 3.1 I first started using 3d CAD for doing StarWars spaceships, etc for Kid’s meal toys back in the late 90’s. Most of my sculpting has been by hand, but still, I feel like I should be a lot more advanced as a 3-D modeler than I am! I have switched entirely to Blender and it is my goal to become professionally proficient with it this year. And the experience of printing my characters in house has just begun. Over the years I always sent the models out to service bureaus for printing. Back in the 90’s it would cost $1,200 to print a small character! This little $200 Elegoo printer makes prints far superior to those old prints! We always had to re-cast the 3-D print into sculpting wax to clean up all the layer lines. Will definitely look in to Lychee and hope that my printing skills come up to par as well.

@Robert Tolone WHAAAAAT?!? I must have missed the episode where you talked about your legendary past! :D Blender is the one to learn, by the way. I was hung up on my 3D software of choice (started using trueSpace 2 in 1998) and have downloaded Blender every couple of years with the intention of learning it. I've also recently taken some ACTION towards that with my latest download of Blender and some inspiration from Ian Hubert's videos. You're continually impressing me, sir.

@@TheCrafsMan I found Blender hard to learn because I have been using Rhino NURBS modeling forever. I couldn’t get the workflow and muscle memory out of my head. Polygons are so different than NURBS surfaces! But I am blown away by all the things that Blender can do and I’m getting better at it every day. Now that I have the basics of the Blender-to-3D printing process in hand it will open up a huge new world of possibilities.

good tips

hello, how many times could you use 3d printed molds with injection molding? thanks :)

@@mertturan2986 about 25units per mold, depends on the plastic you're injecting though. Some require higher pressure, or tougher to release from the mold. There's a lot to factor in, it's a lot of trial and error

I am experiment with compressed air now. Should be interesting!

Yes, Flexible molds are the logical next step and should be a lot of fun.