Nova Labs

Molding and casting demo by Reynolds Advanced Materials

Molding and casting demo by Reynolds Advanced Materials

Andrew

There’s lots of ways to mold a cat.

Cast items on display. Photo by Steven Strasburg.

Jay Mazur, from Reynolds Advanced Materials, stopped by Nova Labs on January 25 to lead a demonstration on various types of mold making materials, applications, and techniques. Hailing from Macungie, PA, Reynolds Advanced Materials is a distributor for Smooth-on, a supplier of many different casting supplies to hobby and industrial markets.

Classrooms A and B at Nova Labs were full for the demonstration.

Classrooms A and B were both full of people interested in learning more about what can be done with urethane, silicone, rubber, epoxy, and more. Some of the materials had pot-life (the time you can work with the material after mixing the various parts together) in the two or three minute range, while others remain workable for much longer. A cast of a large silicone dime in Smoothcast 300Q (Q for “quick” apparently!) even had a dramatic reaction going from clear to opaque in a few seconds, surprising everyone in the room. It was pulled from the mold and passed around the room hardly 30 minutes after being mixed and cast.

Pouring high in a thin stream to reduce bubbles. Product was Mold Star 16 Fast – it has a 6-minute pot life and 30-minute cure.

Jay offered tips for working with various products:

  • The ‘double pour and mix.’ – you start by mixing in one cup, then transfer to another cup to ensure that you can thoroughly stir all the hard-to-reach material at the bottom of the container.
  • For foams, mixing part B a LOT before you combine with part A will help – you can add a lot of air to part B without worrying about the pot life (one flexibile foam he demonstrated only had a pot life of 50 seconds, so pre-mixing really helps).
  • You should also keep some clay on hand, just in case the wall around the part you are casting begins to leak.

At the end of the multi-part demonstration, Jay mixed a product called Alja-Safe and had everyone do a life cast of their thumb. After the 8-minute cure time, the same fast-cure urethane used on the dime was used to create reproductions of each person’s casting. At least a few people said that these would be used to create literal USB thumb drives!

For more info, check out www.reynoldsam.com

Prepping the Alja-Safe alginate before each student was able to mold their thumb.
Molding a thumb in Alja-Safe.
6-8 minutes later, each participant could remove his or her thumb
Thumbs ready to be filled.
Round 1 complete, mixing round 2. The pot life of the Smoothcast 300Q was no more than 70 seconds, so Jay had to pour fast.
Red tinted Smoothcast 300Q for the thumbs. Photo by Brian Jacoby
Waiting for the thumbs to cure.
Comparison of the copy to the real deal.
A thumb in SC300Q.

Here are some more photos from the class.

Jay Mazur pouring the first item
A casting made of Dustin Hoffman’s face. The first layer was SC325 with flesh color added. Foam iT!5 was used as a backfill material, and was tinted blue at the request of someone inthe class. The skin-toned first layer was too thin to be opaque.
Showing the difference between resins being degassed in a vacuum chamber vs. not.
Large silicone mold of a dime.
The finished dime mold, including color. Product was SC300Q and Red Devil Cast Magic powder.
Testing Body Double Fast, a skin-safe silicone made to capture fine detail.
The details captured in Body Double Fast silicone.
Resin with bronze dust. Product was Cold Cast SC Onyx Fast with Bronze powder.
A resin with bronze dust in it and lightly polished. Product was Cold Cast SC Onyx Fast with Bronze powder.
2 castings of a hand and forearm.
2 part silicone mold.
2 part mold for a model car.
This post was written by Andrew Albosta for the Nova Labs blog, and cross-posted here.
48″ x 48″ CNC router and VCarve stools

48″ x 48″ CNC router and VCarve stools

Andrew

Nova Labs recently bought a ShopSabre RC-4 CNC router for the wood shop. A few copies of VCarve are on computers at the makerspace, allowing members to setup their tool path.

Some of the regulars on Wednesday night decided to do a “one-night-build,” or a project we could start and finish in an evening. I started thinking of ideas that we could do on the new tool (mostly so I could learn to use it).

We landed on building some stools downloaded from the open source furniture website OpenDesk. Most designs on the site are setup for 4×8′ sheets of material but we found the Johann Stool from Johann Aussage would fit easily on our half sheets of plywood.

Adobe Illustrator was used to modify the designs for the actual thickness of the plywood we bought, and to eliminate some decoration.

Starting to work through the setup in VCarve.

After those design considerations were fixed, we used VCarve to setup the tool path. They have a a makerspace license allowing for people to use the software at home in basically a trial mode, but save the G-code from the properly licensed software at the makerspace.

3D representation of the toolpath from VCarve

A .25″ end mill was used for everything, including the holes for pins during assembly.

Part-way through cutting the first stool from the 3/4″ plywood.
Part-way through cutting the first stool from the 3/3″ plywood.

Final cleanup was done with a 1/8″ roundover router bit on the regular router table. The laser cutter was used to engrave the NovaLabs logo on the top of the seat, and a credit to the designer was etched (vector cutting at fast speed/low power) onto the bottom.

Johann Stool partially assembled (using nails instead of 1/4″ dowels to hold the sides on).
Top and bottom of the finished Johann Stools.
Nova Labs logo laser engraved on the stool tops.
Vector etching (light cut) on the bottom of the stools with a shout-out to the designer.
Finished and assembled Johann Stools with Nova Labs logo.

 

 

Vulgar Napkin Holders

Vulgar Napkin Holders

Andrew

A colleague/friend of mine got her first solo apartment was lamenting that she was needed a bunch of household necessities, including a napkin holder. Since she hadn’t been in a while, I suggested suggested she could make her own at Nova Labs. Annoyed, she told me to make her one; I thought the best gift was one she’d regret asking for…

The first thoughts included some messy clipart faces (think Garbage Pail Kids stickers), but I quickly settled on some nice type and alliteration.

The design. Font is Avenir Next Ultra Light
Edge view of the napkin holder

The design for the napkin holder itself was whipped up in Illustrator using a simple tabbed box type design.

Production happened using the laser cutter at Nova Labs.

Cutting the first napkin holder on Mongo, Nova Labs’ 100w CO2 laser cutter.
Before pulling the parts out of the laser cutter.
Parts after a light sanding on the downdraft sanding table.

A less vulgar version was created for a neighbor who commented on Facebook that they wanted one, but would have to wait 10 years before their kids could be exposed to the original!

Family friendly napkin holder.
Family friendly napkin holder.
Engraved cube Kickstarter backer gifts

Engraved cube Kickstarter backer gifts

Andrew

Backer Gifts

The Nova Labs Kickstarter campaign ended successfully back in early 2015. One of the higher backer levels was for the backers’ name on a wall in the space, but we also planned on sending them a plaque.

I didn’t expect that someone would put 4 mounting standoffs on their wall, so I thought that something more like a paperweight for the backer’s desk or bookcase would be better.

The Cube

At the fall 2015 Adobe MAX conference, a booth for Universal Laser allowed attendees to make wooden stamp blocks using Adobe’s Creative Cloud Shared Libraries to get files from workstations to the folks running the laser. As the exhibition floor was shutting down they were handing out the remaining cubes, so I grabbed a few of the blanks to play with at home. I thought the 2″ cubes could be a good format for the backer reward.

Not wanting to settle on the first material idea I had, I also ordered a clear acrylic cube to test on.

In the end the acrylic seemed way too ‘corporate gift’ looking, with the birch wood being way warmer, especially after giving the final pieces a coat of tung oil.

Setup and production

Cubes in the Laser Cut software
Test cube and production cubes waiting for engraving (note the numbers on each face so I could keep track of order and “this end up” orientation).
First pass on the production run.

The key to engraving these easily was setting up a row of seven 2″ squares that were lightly cut into a sacrificial material. The blocks were then put on these lines ensuring accurate placement of each faces’ design.

Fortunately the position of “home” doesn’t change as you adjust the Z-height (you need to do the light guide cut with the laser focused on the paper or foamcore, and then drop the bed down to accommodate the height of the block.)

Masking tape was used to reduce the discoloration of the wood due to smoke from the engrave, but I’m not sure if it was worth the time needed to remove all of the tiny counters of the text, vs sanding with a belt or disk sander.

Finished engraving.
Tape off of the wood cube, but still on the acrylic.

As it was, the wood cubes were still sanded down after removing the tape. They were eventually finished with tung oil after doing a few tests with other finishes such as varnish and shellac.

Finished wood and acrylic cubes.
Sign for the laser cutter room

Sign for the laser cutter room

Andrew
The sign before lifting it from the laser. The stencil font kept was perfect for this type of sign.

In a shared space like Nova Labs, it is important to leave things better than you found them (you should read the listserv thread this past week about the router table being left messy).

The laser room suffers its fair share of mess, so I made a reminder sign for the wall above the workstation.

If it reminds even a few people to vacuum up their little dot cutout debris or gets them to put back the key, I guess it will be worth it.

All of the letters left over after lifting up the sign.
People always forget to lift up the honeycomb bed and clean up their little circle cutouts.

 

Slotted Christmas Ornament test

Andrew
Finished Christmas ornament
Finished and assembled Christmas ornament

Last year our team made (well, I made, but the team hosted the decorating party) slot-together Christmas trees for our internal clients.

We wanted to see if there was something else to make them in 2015, so we brainstormed over email. Someone presented a sketch of a Christmas ornament shaped item, and knowing I can whip out this sort of thing I went ahead and made the prototype. Plus, I hadn’t actually cut anything from this particular shade of red 1/8″ acrylic, so it was a good test.

In the end we didn’t do anything because of heavy workload in December, but that’s how it goes sometimes.

Oh, and I hope the Brand folks at work don’t see sad Inky made from the scrap cutouts. It is definitely not on-brand!

Cut out and waiting assembly.
Do not leave the extra pieces with a designer late at night.
Remains of the protective tape.
In disarray.

 

Better base for Stomp Rocket

Andrew

Stomp Rocket with a beefy launch towerStomp Rockets for Christmas!

And the Stomp Rockets have lights to boot! Pretty awesome if it weren’t so cold outside…

One problem with the set is that the base is pretty flimsy. It would move all over the place as they used it, and it was hard to keep the rocket pointed more-or-less straight up.

Having no there really pressing projects to work on, I whipped up an Apollo era looking launch tower for the Stomp Rocket launcher/tube assembly.

Overkill?

You bet. When I showed the pictures at work someone commented “do your kids realize that most dads don’t do this sort of thing for toys?” Of course they don’t, but it’s fun for me so I do it anyway.

Everything was laser cut. Material was some 1/4″ MDF, but it cut really easily. The base was another piece of 1/4″MDF, but it was wayyyy different and required multiple passes, and had a ton of charring on the edge. I cleaned that edge up on a belt sander.

The basic shape came from the BoxMaker site, and the pattern was created in Illustrator.

Boeing 747 toy

Boeing 747 toy

Andrew

747 laser cut modelMy daughter had asked about making a plane at “your workshop” (aka Nova Labs) and I thought I’d test one method before I brought her along.

This Boeing 747 model started from a vector 3-view drawing I found online. I cleaned it up in Illustrator and prepared cutouts for 5mm wood.

Cut on the laser cutter at Nova Labs.

Definitely less than an hour start to finish.

I think the next try will be to make something a little more 3d by layering pieces of material (I can then get the relative position of the wings and horizontal stabilizer in the right place).

747 laser cut model

747 laser cut model

Remixed 747 from a reader

In November of 2020, I got an email from Chris asking if I had the file for this, as he wanted to turn into into Christmas tree ornaments for people at his company in the aviation industry. I sent it over to him.

He ended up remixing it a bit and making the following for his team (logos blurred at his request).

747'ish Christmas ornament on a tree
Remixed 747 model, turned into Christmas ornament gifts for Chris’s company.
Voyager gold record inspired playground accessory

Voyager gold record inspired playground accessory

Andrew

Voyager Gold Records on a playgroundWe recently built a playground in the backyard (expect a separate post with some time-lapse photography we took during the process), but we had to make one modification to the plans; One of two slides was omitted since it would have required us to extend the new retaining wall further than we really wanted to deal with, and it was already plenty of work…

Fast forward to the ‘finished’ playground, and we had a big hole where the slide should have attached. Not good considering the platform height was 5′ and the kids are still little.

We discussed several options for covering the opening, but most were just too boring sounding. I had my mind set on laser engraving a clear acrylic ‘window’ and mounting it in some sort of frame. Eventually my wife said something about space (I’m not even sure what exactly anymore), but I was soon looking at Wikipedia for information on the Voyager spacecrafts, launched in 1977, and their Gold Records.

I’m glad I found the tongue and groove cedar planks at Loews as it made it really easy to mount the acrylic panel. Hopefully the rest of the photos and captions speak for themselves.

Overall, an interesting and nerdy addition to the playground, and hopefully one that the kids will appreciate someday (my initial explanation of ‘there is a copy of this on the FURTHEST HUMAN THING FROM EARTH’ was met with puzzled looks).

Lastly, here’s a quick video showing the start of the engraving process on Nova Labs’ laser cutter:

Room signs for kids

Room signs for kids

Andrew

Painted sign - EleanorEvery kid needs a sign on his or her door, and while they are little, might as well make it cute (since there will be “Parents, Stay Out!” signs soon enough).

These are actually the second round of room signs – at our old place, and with one kid, we made a similar sign with the same decals. But now with two kids, I decided to make two brand new copies…

A scan of the dragon fly wallpaper decals was traced in Illustrator and each shape was incorporated into the background. Text was added, naturally. Check out a PDF of the file here: Room_signs

Cutting was performed on the laser cutter at Nova Labs, out of 1/8″ hard board.

I primed the pieces with white spray paint, and mom did the painting (including glitter spray paint) with some “help.” 🙂