Cura .2.6: mold function?

[Susanne 0]

Hi!

Does anybody know how the mold function works?

Best regards

Susanne

[ultiarjan 1,223]

Hi Susanne, welcome to the forum.

Did you try to play with it a bit, just take a simple shape an play with the settings, while looking at layer view after you change something, this should make clear whats the function of the settings. Also read the screentips per setting...

Basically the "angle" setting determines the outside shape of the mold, the width determines how "thick" the mold will get.

What is missing imho at the moment to make it really useful is an option to split the mold into 2 parts (at least I have not seen this...) so currently the sort of shapes you can use are limited.

[nallath 1,120]

We kinda designed it to work with PVA. That way you can print a single mold, cast something in it and then disolve the mold. That way, it doesn't matter if the mold can be split (some molds might even need more than 2 splits, so that makes the splitting a bit complicated!)

[joheben 0]

Did you try to play with it a bit

I had a much more fundamental question - where exactly to find the Mold function in Cura 2.7... it is not obvious! Answer (I found it): it is a Special Mode that must be made visible in Settings...Configuration settings visibility.

I plan to create a dissolvable mold in PVA, for molding silicon or any elastomer (then to think about splitting it for creating reusable molds in PVA).

I need to figure out how to somehow trim the safety margins in Cura (Ultimaker 3 firmware is not agreeing on the margin calculations, and even the non-mold print barely fits rotated at 45 degrees - I might have to rotate it at 45 degrees also in the Z dimension - ugly and wasteful of PVA...

Any comments or suggestions will be much appreciated!

[J_Dunn 0]

Did you try to play with it a bit

I had a much more fundamental question - where exactly to find the Mold function in Cura 2.7... it is not obvious! Answer (I found it): it is a Special Mode that must be made visible in Settings...Configuration settings visibility.

I plan to create a dissolvable mold in PVA, for molding silicon or any elastomer (then to think about splitting it for creating reusable molds in PVA).

I need to figure out how to somehow trim the safety margins in Cura (Ultimaker 3 firmware is not agreeing on the margin calculations, and even the non-mold print barely fits rotated at 45 degrees - I might have to rotate it at 45 degrees also in the Z dimension - ugly and wasteful of PVA...

Any comments or suggestions will be much appreciated!

Settings -> Setting Visibility -> Type 'mold' in the filter box then you should be able to enable the options. They will show up under 'special modes' then in your print setup (make sure you have 'custom' selected instead if recommended next to print setup). I was thinking of using this to do investment casting. The theory being, print in something like PETG so I have the base mold, then use wax to make the investment object and then use the wax object for creating the plaster mold for casting aluminum into (want to upgrade my hotend mounts I had to 3d print for the E3D hot end to aluminum rather than petg). Unfrotunately with the lack of being able to split the mold that kind of defeats the purpose IMO. Otherwise it would be a GREAT tool for something like investment casting as you don't have to print a new base object and waste all that time, instead you could just print the mold once and then cast your investment materials into it.