#JGmakes

[jackalgirl]

Progress! The resin cured. I haven’t tested to see if I used enough glow-in-the dark mica powder to actually glow in the dark yet (pro tip: if you’re using a cheap brush to add it to your mold, watch out for hairs coming out of the brush; one of the gems now has a black “inclusion”), but even though there were bubbles in this latest attempt, they were much smaller.

I was able to wet-sand these down to 1500 grit, which is “good enough” for a couple of coats of clear coat. I am going to let the gems go overnight before I flip them over and do the other sides. Overall, I am pleased, but if I do this again, I’m definite going to do it when there are absolutely no other distractions.

When they’re completely done, I will set up some glamor shots with the holder, then call this project complete.

[jackalgirl]

Soul gem FAIL!

I learned some important lessons:

First, adding glow-in-the-dark mica powder to resin definitely affects the cure time: these sat in the mold for a week and did not fully cure; some of the sides were relatively hard, but the top-most facing ones definitely were not, and they deformed as I pulled them out of the mold.

Second, wear gloves, always. The resin remover I got from Armelite was only partially useful (I had to use it and scrub with paper towels, then soap, several times to get my hands clean).

Third, I was worried that sprinkling mica flakes into the resin as I poured it wouldn't be as good as mixing it into one of the sides. However -- and you can't really tell this from the photos here -- it seemed to work just fine.

I will need to thoroughly clean the mold before I try again. However, I think the solution will be: very light mica dust in the mold. No mica whatsoever in the resin. Make use of slow mixing + warm water "double-boiler" setup to encourage air to leave the resin before pouring with some time to degas. Sprinkle mica flakes into the resin as I pour; use some light jiggling of the mold and passing a lighter over the top to encourage any remaining bubbles to be gone.

I also got some latex from Armelite; I might build up a slight dam around the mold's pour holes so that as the resin cures and "slumps" into the mold, there will be some extra. I also got some extra silicon molds from Michael's so that I can do something with leftover resin this time.

I will try this again at some point in the future, and I will also try printing the soul gems on the Saturn 4 Ultra again as well, possibly today.

This has been educational, and has led to an epiphany: I am happiest when I am trying something new.

[jackalgirl]

Resin Frustration

Using this Armilite resin is super frustrating, I have to say. "1:1 by volume and you have to be precise", they say, and as far as I know, I *am* being precise, but my most current pour is tacky after > 24 hours. So this tells me either it was too cold to cure (probably not the case), or I didn't mix it thoroughly (I mixed it for five whole minutes, paying close attention and making sure to scrape everything) or that I got the ratios off (if the ratios were off, then there is no way for me to be precise, period, and I will need to switch to a ratio-by-weight resin instead of one by volume).

Currently waiting on a resin cleaning solution from Armilite, and also have moved the mold to a warmer space (the kitchen) and will let it go until I get the cleaner.

It's super frustrating, because of out of the two methods (casting, 3D printing), casting is giving me what I want.

[jackalgirl]

The gems out of the pour. Lessons learned: o Go easy on the mica powder. If it clumps, it will probably create a void in the result (two of my gems have holes on edges now). o Some, but not all, of the air will trickle out of this slow-set clear resin. So there are still bubbles (I'm okay with this for now), but the resin will slump into the mold, creating a concavity. I'll have to sand this down, which is okay, because I intend to do this, and to clear-coat the gems when I'm done. But the lesson here is that you might need to either overfill a little, or build up some walls around the pour hole so that you get a little extra that you can then sand down o Wow, the color is deep. I need to make more of these to use this up, and maybe see if I can add some Miraclekoo dye to shift the color in a more blue direction, and make it more transluscent than these came out o The glow-in-the-dark mica powder worked! o The crushed mica did too, but is less evident because the color's so deep

[jackalgirl]

Got a pour done, in the midst of other chores.

Lessons learned: Alumilite warns you that the ratio of resin parts needs to be 1:1 as perfectly as possible (being slightly off may result in cure failure).

In the box, though, they give you these comically small measuring cups: 30 ml each. The gradations are provided by raised plastic markings (in the clear plastic cup)…on the inside. This means that when you pour the clear resin elements into the cup, the markings effectively disappear.

So my cure may fail, because it was next to impossible to see the markings and I needed more than one I could get out of one cup.

Next: Alumilite warns you that a little dye goes a long way. What they do not tell you is that it will not come out of the dropper bottles in drops - it will pour. So the lesson here is to put a little in a separate container and use the mix stick to just barely add some to your part A. I had to dilute down the mixture twice and have a ton of leftover deep purple part A so I guess I’ll be making more purple soul gems.

Next: I feel like I should have had three pairs of gloves on instead of one. Resin gets everywhere and it would have been good to strip off the outer layer every time it was time to love to the next step.

There were many warnings about bubble management. I am not overly worrying about this right now, because simply measuring the stuff was difficult and frustrating, and I had mixed up crumpled mica into part A also, which was entertaining.

Now that I know roughly how much I need, I’ll be able to eyeball a measurement on a plastic party cup in Sharpie, measure and transform that marking to another one, and I should be good to go.

I’m going to leave this for the full 24 hours, so we’ll see how this turned out (if at all) tomorrow.

[jackalgirl]

Learning

I'm preparing to make a silicon mold for these soul gems. I had originally built the box without thinking of volume, but some part of me (or other me on the worldstree with more experience) said, "hey, maybe you should figure out if you don't have to use all your silicone/won't have enough silicone".

Smooth-On has a handy-dandy calculator for the silicone I bought (Mold Star 16*): https://www.smooth-on.com/support/calculators/#pour-mold and that helped me understand that yes, the original mold box was way way too big and would have required more than twice the amount of silicone that I have. Science!

*I should have gotten Mold Star 15 now that I think of it, as the only 6-minute pot time of 16 is imo cutting it close for a first attempt at this.

I rebuilt the mold box, and you can still see the outlines of the original box, so I cut it down quite a bit. This should use about 1.6 pounds of the 2 pounds of silicone that I have. I'm going to mix up all of it, though, since I'm not entirely sure I mathed it all correctly. But the next barrier is that the clear plastic cups I bought for mixing will not hold the complete 2 pounds of mixed silicone and the 6-minute pot life means I need to find a bigger mix/pour container.

Soul Gem Files from KAGR3NAC's Soul Gem Holder project on Cults3D: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/skyrim-soul-gem-holder

Mold Star 16 Pour-On Silicone: https://www.smooth-on.com/products/mold-star-16-fast/

[jackalgirl]

Proud enough of this, despite its flaws, to post it on its own. More here: https://www.tumblr.com/jackalgirl/765227813133549568/mostly-done-good-enough-for-now-v1-of-the

[jackalgirl]

Attempt at soul gem resin pour #4 in the mold. No photos this time. If this doesn't work, I'm going to have to possibly figure something else out -- maybe a "ratio by weight" resin instead of one by volume. That might be an easier way to be precise, since it seems to matter.

Lesson learned this time was: don't be distracted. I work from home and it wasn't a big deal to do this while working (I don't have to instantaneously be "on" all the time), but all in all I think it's better for me at least to be able to focus 100% of my attention on just the one thing (ymmv).

Fingers crossed that these dang things actually cure properly this time.

[jackalgirl]

Pour attempt #3: when you can’t fall asleep because your brain is obsessing about order of operations, it’s probably a good sign the you need to give it another shot.

I also found a video from Steve McDonald arts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0flwBrz5qVM

So, the steps:

Mix up part A with color (no mica flakes). Mix thoroughly and set the mixing cup inside another mixing cup filled with warm water: warmth (not too hot, tho) lets the thicker part A flow more freely, letting it release bubbles better.

I then let that “de-gas” after replenishing the warm water.

I forgot to add the glow-in-the-dark mica powder at this step, which was my original intention.

Next: add part B and the mica powder, mix very thoroughly and slowly for five minutes (following Steve’s advice to scrape the bottoms and sides of the mixing cup.

Let de-gas for five minutes in a bath of warm water.

Slowly pour into mold; it was at this point that I sprinkled in crushed mica flakes.

Pass the flame of a lighter across the surface of the poured resin to pop bubbles.

It looks pretty good; I didn’t see any huge bubbles going into the mold. I’ve ordered some resin cleaner from Armalite, which I’ll use on attempt #2’s results and see if I can stabilize those or clean them up.

I had quite a bit of excess resin and realize that I need some additional spare molds for leftovers to make cabochons or other shapes; I don’t think I’ll ever get into wire wrapping but it would be nice not to waste the resin. I poured my excess onto the plastic top of a pen multi-pack I had just so I’d end up with some half-cylinder shapes.

[jackalgirl]

Second pour. Still lots of tiny bubbles. I might try to mix some of the glow-in-the-dark mica with photoresin and try printing it, and see how that goes. I won’t get the quartz-like effect from the mixed-in crumpled mica sheets, but maybe it would at least be bubble-free.

I’ll probably look for some videos to see if I can find some better techniques for casting these. They’re also slightly sticky, so once again either I didn’t mix properly, had the ratios wrong, or just need to leave them alone so they have some more curing time, this time out of the mold.

[jackalgirl]

Think I am about done with bags/pouches for now.

Lessons learned: the slippery faux fur is a beast to work with. Basically, you have to pad-stitch this within an inch of its life prior to any sewing step or it will slide and stretch on you, which is an issue if you’re stitching it to cotton.

If you have a pattern that has a definite “up”, your bag pattern should not be one piece in the vertical direction, because when you bring the opposite edges together to form the top of the bag, half of your bag will feature an upside-down pattern.

The bag does look better if your drawstring channel is some distance from the top edge.

And lastly, I really don’t like working with slippery fabrics.

[jackalgirl]

Today’s project: trying to make a faux fur-lined small pouch for knucklebone dice. I am waiting on silk cord and will stitch the channels when I have those on hand.

I’m not sure how many of these I’ll end up making; the faux fur is a pain in the rear. It’s super stretchy and slippery so I basically have to pad-stitch it temporarily to get it to behave.

I’ve decided that for this top-stitching, I’m not going to go back-and-forth to secure the stitching; I’ll sew just short and secure the thread ends by hand.

[jackalgirl]

Today’s progress. Got the soul gem holder with a finish applied; I like how it turned out. Also the last color of the five colors of “glass” bones (the almost black color) is done; now I need to see bags to hold these.

And I still plan to use the resin gems to make a silicon mold for casting (but I need to find the time to teach myself how to do that).

[jackalgirl]

Today’s project: assembling a soul gem holder from Kagr3nac’s excellent set of 3D files (here: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/skyrim/skyrim-soul-gem-holder), printed at 80% scale, with the insert that lets me tuck an LED light into the hidden compartment.

Things I learned: first, I should have taken the individual files (the “cage” is three separate pieces) and merged them in blender for an all-in-one print. No matter how careful I am, when it comes to glue-up, I’m always off. Secondly, working with photopolymer resin lets you apply resin to the seams with a q-tip and hit it with UV, which I did (and then sanded it down), but go lightly on the resin because it will wick into the gaps just fine. But it would have been faster to just merge the files and print them all at once.

I’m going to use the gems to try to learn how to make a flexible silicon mold and then cast in a different kind of resin (but not today).

[jackalgirl]

Things

Me: I’m going to bed early today!

Also me: I’ll go to bed when I finally get a successful 3D print of Mcgybeer’s articulated dragon and _Isaiah_’s articulated slug!

Reader, I went to bed at midnight

(Details below the cut)

Refs:

- https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/game/articulated-dragon-mcgybeer

- https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4727448

- https://youtu.be/JnKtPg0BEhs

Printer: ELEGOO Saturn 4 Ultra, temp: 39-40C (machine temp, not room temp), standard 8K resin in color “vanilla”. Knuckle bones are using standard translucent resin with Miraclekoo dyes and default print settings.

Slug: 150% scale, 28 s bottom exposure, 2 s layer exposure

Dragon: 77%ish (scaled to fit), raised up about 3-4 mm and used Chitubox default settings to add light supports, 35 s bottom exposure, 2 s layer exposure

With the standard bottom exposure time of 35 seconds, I found that the slug printed directly on the bed would have its sections fused. But the machine is not warm enough, your bottom layer won’t stick to the build plate. Other refs state that 20 C is minimum for resin prints of articulated things, but I found it to be much too cold for a lower bottom exposure time. I dialed in to 28 s for the slug at 39-40 C and still had to gently work some segments free, but it worked.

I mention all of this because Uncle Jessy’s video says he’ll tell you his printer settings, but then he doesn’t, and since it’s been several years since he posted it, I don’t think he’s going to. What he should have said was that the factors he mentioned are going to be unique per printer and that the temperature of the machine / space is extremely important, but even having some starting parameters would have been helpful (and less time- and material-consuming). So if this helps you, glee. : )

[jackalgirl]

Progress! I would have preferred to have used the subdivision subdivide modifier with one additional level, but Blender kept crashing on me when I tried to add in some booleans.

Those of you who are good at Blender know that the order of operations matters; that was part of my issue.

Learned a lot about supports & removing a print from same. It’s a bit rough (resin can deform a bit and this did), but I think that after I prime it (I’m going to go for navy blue paint, maybe with a wash of black) and finish it with the silver wax, it’ll look good.

Meanwhile, in Inkscape, I am working on my adaptation of Marcos Antônio Luiz's Corel Draw version of Willem Jansz Blaeu's 16th Century illustration of a celestial globe, so that I can bring this over into Blender and use it as a displacement map and, ultimately, print out a two-part 3D-printed celestial globe with the art in slight bas-relief (which I will then finish with the same silver wax finish I used on my Soul Gem Holder).

Reader, it makes me wish for the days when I could still use Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is great, but it is underpowered for what I am trying to do (or maybe that's just my computer). But I am inching along.