u/The_White_Dynamite

I'm trying to recreate/remix this planter for my wife but I can't for the life of me figure how to make this work.

Steps I've taken so far with some success:

Create cylinder

Make plane tangent to cylinder face

Create splines on said plane running from top to bottom, and connect end points to create shapes (novice so sorry for poor terminology)

Warp them over the cylinder

I either have issues with either the connecting shapes on the backside creating hard corners where they meet instead of a fluid curve OR I get a message along the lines of "cannot warp due to intersecting contours". For the latter, none of the spline shapes are intersecting on the plane, and this happens for one sketch and not the other.

Hey all,

I'm very new to mold making. I've been trying to make a 2 part mold of a, for lack of better terms, bowl using 3D printed PLA as the mold itself (shown in first 4 images) with platinum cured silicone casted into the mold. The PLA has been coated in a thin layer of XTC-3D to avoid microbubbles escaping from the voids in the 3D print. The mold is split down the middle making two quarter spheres and when combined make a half sphere ~18 cm in diameter. In addition to screwing the mold together at many points along the seam, I also created a gasket (seen in red in image) to hold the two parts together and create what I thought was an airtight seal between the two. The gasket was also covered in a light coat of vacuum grease. I also line the outside of the seam with hot glue. However, when placing the mold inside the vacuum chamber I still get some air bubbles at a few points along the seam which make their way into my silicone part.

I've tried making just a normal bowl mold in the past, but it was damn near impossible to remove the silicone part from the mold without partially destroying the mold and part, especially when I use a 3D printed bowl inset to create an actual bowl with a thin (~1cm) shell. The finished silicone part I want is shown in the last 3 images. This part was made with a single part mold and it was damaged in the process of removal...hence why I made this 2 part mold so it could be easily removed.

Notes:

Link to .STEP file of the mold is included if anyone is interested in looking at it
I have to use platinum cured silicone for the part.
There will be multiple layers to the silicone part and I need control over the thickness of each layer, which is why I'm using a 3D printed mold.

Anyone have any recommendations on how to improve the overall design to create a seal that can work under vacuum or design considerations to avoid creating a seam down the middle?

TLDR:
I'm trying to make a 2 part mold made of PLA and casted with silicone that when placed in a vacuum chamber does not experience bubbling due to an improper sealing where the two mold pieces connect. What's the best way to do this or design considerations to improve design?

https://preview.redd.it/k87ovbykodyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5a70a81963c3c9aac65cf4c2ec6a071916e6ef0e

https://preview.redd.it/6l65naykodyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=85eb11619f0d265f4ace032d6f32babda3efcac8

https://preview.redd.it/k8b7xaykodyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1d45e8771bdd9d1e422321dc6177248d6f5cc7df

https://preview.redd.it/31hamaykodyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c625d8ab529879cf99e29db87568182320a17b15

https://preview.redd.it/n7dtdz6nqdyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d94a8baa418e08cc80157700908ff4afd966b8c

https://preview.redd.it/dt6jvx6nqdyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d4409817986a3903ccd60dd43c1043a136567dc

https://preview.redd.it/ht9giy6nqdyg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f02169ba78d599f812d26c86c62e3cc8e6d1ac92

Link to .step file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RXJazqe4nX_puGaPApj6s_Sz1V8o7ZPh/view?usp=sharing

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