Greg comments on his difficulties with the stiff consistency of the cornstarch / caulk mixture, which seems like a germane time to mention a comment on last night’s Oogoo post from W. Aaron Waychoff, who claims to have had success using glycerine as an additive instead of cornstarch. [Thanks, Greg, and Aaron!]
Turns out, though, that mixing in some cornstarch accelerates the drying process; just how much depends on how much starch you add. The author recommends starting with a 1:1 mix. I’m not sure about his explanation that the process works because the hygroscopic starch carries moisture into the internal volume of the silicone, but in any case there are probably other additives that will accelerate the process as well as or better than cornstarch. You might even find one that’s not opaque and allows for translucent castings.
For our last special theme of the year, we’ll be looking at the tools we all use to come up with the projects we pursue and how we manage them. We’ll be looking at physical tools, such as notebooks, drawing tools, whiteboards, and the like, but also, things like brainstorming and project-management software, and the […]
Josef Průša saw last week’s post about choosing a silicone for casting soft button arrays and pointed me to his printable mold for such arrays on Thingiverse. The model was produced in Clifford Wolf’s awesome OpenSCAD 3D modeling package, and the .scad script is available for download with the Thing. It has been parametrized to produce molds of button arrays having any number of rows and columns–all you have to do is change two values. The individual buttons are sized to match the SparkFun 2×2 button pad used on the monome, and also include backside recesses for LEDs.
Ever since I made my first ninja throwing star in metal shop class, I’ve always wanted to make my own knife. But I was put off by the notion of having to acquire the furnace, anvil, leather apron, and handlebar mustache requisite for forging a proper tempered blade. So, instead I decided to make a utility knife by cutting out a pattern from a circular saw blade, using my Dremel Rotary Tool.
We’re looking for a new name for the next edition of the Make: Leatherman Juice CS4! Got any suggestions? If we like yours, we’ll send you one of the tools when it comes out, sporting the new name! But here’s the rub: We need your suggestions NOW, before tomorrow afternoon Pacific time. Please email your […]
MAKE pal Steve Cooley, who manufactures the Beatseqr hardware performance controller, has posted the lab notes from his recent experiments with various silicone products for casting monolithic soft button arrays. I love it when people do this–the steps and missteps that happen along the way are often as interesting, and as helpful, as the finished product.
