Methods and Materials of Production
Casting- outsourced
For repeatable results, the best casting method is lost wax casting. This involves a wax version of each piece you want in metal. The wax pieces are attached to a wax “tree” and encased in a very fine plaster called investment. The bottom of the tree trunk sticks out from the plaster. The wax is then melted out of the plaster leaving perfect voids of your pieces. Liquid metal is the injected into the plaster, filling the voids and giving you the metal version of your pieces.
Pros:
• Quick to make the same piece many times
• Reduces labor costs
• You can get textures and volume difficult or not possible with metal sheet and wire.
Cons:
• Hollow pieces are more difficult
• Cleaning up mold lines can be time consuming
• Pieces are soft after casting and require hardening
• Pieces thinner than 24ga. cannot be reliably cast
• Since this is outsourced, you must add in 2-3 weeks for the pieces to be cast and returned to you.
Materials:
Bronze, sterling, anti-tarnish sterling, golds, platinum
Casting- in-house
We can make our own molds and cast metal as well as plastic, resin, and rubber in house. If you have taken the casting class, you can cast in metal, otherwise you are limited to alternative materials. Molds are RTV and the best products both for casting and molds come from either Smooth-On or Polytek. Plastics and rubbers are hand mixed and poured into RTV molds, let cure, then removed and the next one poured. You are limited by the number of molds and the curing time.
Pros:
• Quick results!
• Many plastics are quick curing, allowing for quick reproduction
• Can do in the studio- no additional time
• Lightweight pieces
• Inexpensive
• Same texture and volume as casting
Cons:
• Alt Materials: Can’t solder, so cold connections or built in connections
• Hazardous materials
• Messy
• Very thin and delicate pieces are difficult to do as the only force to fill the mold is gravity
• Air holes can be an issue. There are tricks to minimize this.
• Same challenges as casting above
Materials:
Metals, Plastic, Polyurethane rubber, silicone rubber, latex rubber, epoxy
Laser cutting/ Laser etching
Using Adobe Illustrator you can create 2D line files of your pieces which can then be sent to a laser cutting service, such as Ponoko (www.ponoko.com) which will then produce the pieces in the material specified.
Pros:
• Extremely detailed and symmetric designs
• Quick to put together
• If use space well can be extremely cheap
• Unusual materials
• Can be combined with metal or other materials post-cutting
Cons:
• Computer knowledge required
• You can’t solder the pieces, so cold connections, tab and slot, and other creative connections need to be used.
• This is a very trendy technique so it can be hard to set yourself apart
• Need to build in extra time for cutting and shipping
Materials:
felt, acrylic, thin metal, wood veneer, bamboo, cardboard
Waterjet cutting
Similar to laser cutting, but a wider array of materials are available to work with as the water doesn’t get hot.
Pros and Cons same as Laser cutting
Materials:
same as laser cutting plus leather, rubber, fabric, paper, silicone, etc.
RP (Rapid Prototyping)
RP is a 3D print from a computer file of your piece. There are several 3D modeling programs- Sketchup, Rhino, Solidworks- that you can use. These programs produce files which you can send to a RP service such as Shapeways (www.shapeways.com) and have them printed. There are several types of RP, with differing levels of detail and materials.
Pros:
• Excellent way to get very intricate and difficult 3D forms
• Computer knowledge is an absolute must
• Can be used to make molds for casting as well
Cons:
• Can be expensive
• Programs have varying degree of difficulty to learn
• Clean up still likely needed on pieces
Materials:
plaster, plastics, metal
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