3-d food printer

Can it do this? If so, I'll go to mars.

Still I found the time to clean out some screens and make a few new candles and glasses

This is an image of a candle made with some ink and a sticker. The idea with the paint behind the seven day candle is that it will allow me to use any color combination of sticker design on top and the edges of the sticker blend in better with the paint than with the glass. I also applied some stickers to some wine bottles that I cut into glasses that can be used from drinking and/or for candles. I haven't had the time to pour any wax into the glasses, but my son seems to enjoy using one of the glasses to drink from around the house. I'll see how the sticker survives in the sink before I go further with that concept. I gave up on printing directly on the glass for now because it doesn't seem worth the effort for the mess it makes.

Urethane resins are inconsistent - epoxy resin is more reliable, but requires patience

I was in a rush to see my new mold the other day, so I purchased some urethane resin, smooth-on 326, with a medium strength and 5-10 minute pot life. I had surprisingly good results and started retooling my setup to run with the 326. I used up my 2 pint kit and on a Saturday afternoon I visited my local supplier of all things molded, Douglas and Sturgess, but they were out of the affordable pint kits. I was in the framework that urethane was now working for me and went ahead and tried the Task 9 Urethane resin by Smooth-On as a replacement. The results were not the same and I was left feeling like I wasted an entire day. It may be the moisture, which the sales agent at Douglas and Sturgess warned me about, or it may be incompatible with the pigments I am using, like aluminum bronzing pigments and steel powder. The results were more bubbles than ever, with pits and holes, and when I submerged the pieces in water to clean off the mold release, they curled and buckled to the point that they were not useful.

The good news was that I got a workable batch out with the Smooth on 326 and would use that again in a hurry, but I switched back to epoxy for a final run. Patience is all that it ask for and now that I used my mold once and no what to expect, I realized I don't need to be in such a hurry. Going back to the epoxy did have some risk in that a mold with the urethane could react differently and stick to the epoxy or break down the mold, but it didn't and a new batch of emblems made with epoxy emerged the next day. The firmness and the rigidity of the epoxy is superior to the urethane and the consistency of the epoxy makes it worth the wait.

The information that I gained from this weekend is that urethane can be used, like epoxy, but the Smooth On 326 is better than the other urethane resins for imitating epoxy resin with powder pigments. Also, I can go back and forth with my molds using urethane plastic when I am in a hurry, but the slower setting epoxy is a more detailed and better final product.

Bubbles, bubbles, everywhere, but nor a stick to pop.

I poured an 8 ounce batch of urethane mixed with steel pigment and it went into approximately 30 pieces in a variety of molds. The bubbles formed the longer the urethane was in the mixing container, so as I went deeper into the pour the more bubbles appeared in my work. I popped a few of the easy to get to bubbles, but gave up on the pieces that had batches of small bubbles. I'm just going to let them set and see what happens when I sand them down. The only use I have for these pieces is raised sticker emblems, key chains or magnets and I'm not that worried about the back side currently. These may end up being give-a-ways for the Y-Que store in Los Angeles.

Selling things is harder than it seems, so I don't really think I can sell this stuff until it's been tested. Secondly, most everything on earth has already been made by companies much more professionally than I have done. The world of etsy and printerest may be a market for craft items, but I haven't really spent enough time developing a profile on these websites to think that I can actually sell stuff there. My own website gets a lot of traffic, but t-shirts are the products there and these emblems may be able to blend in with my printed shirts since most of the designs are the same. I like the idea of proliferating the emblems by giving them away and then at least they may end up spread around Los Angeles versus randomly distributed through the web.

To isolate what makes these pieces different is a bit of a mental exercise. Over time I have worked with a wide range of materials and developed some exclusive techniques at mold making and casting that allow me to make these items, but to identify what makes them different isn't obvious from the outside looking in.

The first technical development is my methods for taking a high contrast image and creating a relief and mold without having to use a laser or hi-tech equipment. The cost for the mold is relatively cheap, unless I make a silicon version, then I have to add the cost of the silicon. The silicon mold will be more useful for a wide range of materials. The second character of my work is the mixing of the metallic particles, cold casting, to create a metallic finish that is also resistant to weathering. The third character is the thinness of the pieces which allows me to place the pieces on other materials like magnet sheets and sticker paper, thus making a emblem type of item that can be used as a sticker. Now with the urethane I can speed up my production time and take my work with me to make things on the go. I have also been adding a second color to the background and creating a layered effect that is more colorful than just the monotone reliefs. Together I have finished photographically produced emblems that can be made cheaply out of plastic and yet look like metal.

Urethane plastics and discharge inks are unrelated materials, except where I work

I've fallen into my trap of experimentation instead of working and now that I have gone down the rabbit hole I see a new world of possibilities. My previous post indicated how I have regressed to working smaller due to the expense of materials and how epoxy is a great casting material, but it takes forever to set up. I wanted to test a new mold making process, but decided to try some Smooth-On Urethane plastic because it sets way quicker than epoxy, like 30 minutes to an hour. Previously I had not been successful with Urethane finishes because it did not seem to finish as smooth as epoxy did, but I was wrong about this. It appears I was spending too much time mixing my pigments into the urethane and when I sped this process up, the urethan poured smooth and with less bubbles than I previously had gotten.

My second test with the urethane was to use aluminum pigment and sand it down to get a metallic finish. With a bit of quick sanding, 100 grit sandpaper, it worked too and finished with a metallic top surface just like epoxy and polyester resin. Next I am going to try it with some steel / iron pigments to try and get a rusty metal finish and in all probability this should work. The cost of urethane is significantly less than epoxy and the quicker set times are a lifesaver because it frees me up to make more designs when I can see the results of each mold quicker.

In the middle of playing with the urethane, I pulled out some Wilflex Plascharge base and mixed some discharge plastisol. I had been meaning to try this for months and finally got around to it with the idea of making discharge transfers. The discharge transfers did not work, but I mixed both glow in the dark ink and fluorescent red inks with the plascharge base and got great results. The finish was light and the glow effect was pretty good. Even the fluorescent red popped on a black t-shirt without a white under print. I don't like the smell, but the results are fantastic for printing on darks. Finally our Pluto Never Forget t-shirt can be done without 2 screens. I haven't done the wash test, but I don't see why this should fail.

Photos of magnets

Emblems

Materials make the mold - supply list

There are so many things I think I need to complete my projects, but with a limited budget I just can't afford to invest in making the types of pieces that I am drawn to. I like making the larger brick panels that are made inside of recycled screen printing frames, but they require in excess of 20-30 ounces of Epoxy, plus some pigments and some plaster / mortar to make them solid enough to be used as a table top or panel on a wall. I put the cost of each panel at $10-15/ea, not to mention my time or the frame cost. This starts the cycle of reconsideration for my projects, because I then think of how I can make things that are smaller using the same techniques. One panel uses the same amount of materials that I could use to make 20 smaller pieces, and so it goes. I am now rethinking my project, before I run out of materials from last year, and re-inventing my magnets, which are significantly smaller and easier to display.

Here are some photos of my most recent batch of photo fresco refrigerator magnets.