Today at the Pittsburgh Tech Shop, I took a class in mold making and casting. This is a great technique for making multiple copies of a piece out of resin. It's used in sculpting, prop making, special effects makeup, and many more applications. This Instructable is the documentation of the class in which I found a piece to copy from the part bins available at the TechShop, cast a mold out of silicone, and filled the mold with resin. I will discuss the process of casting beginning with choosing a piece to cast, making the mold, and casting a piece from the mold.
More information about the Pittsburgh TechShop can be found at http://techshop.ws/
I made it at TechShop!
If you have a silicone mold already available to you, the casting process does not take very long. If you're starting by making the mold, however, be prepared to wait at least two hours for the mold to cure. Be sure you have the following before beginning: Time: at least 2 hours for a small project
Tools:
-latex or rubber gloves
-utility knife
-4 paper cups for measuring
-2 paper cups for mixing
-paper or plastic cup to hold the silicone
-hot glue gun
-wooden mixers (popsicle sticks)
Materials:
-something to mold
-silicone RTV
-urethane liquid plastic resin
-Ease Release agent
You should coat the surface that you're working on in a disposable material to catch any spills. It would also be a good idea to have paper towels on hand to clean up messes.
Necessary materials can be purchased from websites such as http://www.smooth-on.com/
If all of the Google Reader replacements you've tried are too bloated or weighed down with features you don't really use, Newsvibe may be a solid alternative. It's fast, free, and sparse—which means it's just you, your feeds, and your starred articles.Newsvibe is free to use and free to sign up for. You can import an OPML file (like the kind you would get from Google Takeout) to bring your feeds into the service, although I had to try a couple times to make it work. Once imported however, your feeds show up individually on the left side of the page, along with the option to see all articles, unread articles, and shared articles. That's about it. Click a headline to expand it down, double-click to open the article on its site. Star it to add it to starred articles.That's where Newsvibe's features stop—there's no sharing options, no mobile apps, no browser extensions, nothing fancy. Depending on your needs, it could either be entirely too feature anemic or elegantly minimal—if you need those extra options, it's not for you, but if you're looking for something simple, fast, free, web-based, and available on any web-enabled device, it's worth a look.Newsvibe
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