Metamolds: Computational design of silicone molds

Alderighi T., Malomo L., Giorgi D., Pietroni N., Bickel B., Cignoni P.

3D printing  Digital Fabrication  Computational Fabrication  Molding  Silicone  Reproduction  Computer graphics  Fabrication 

We propose a new method for fabricating digital objects through reusable silicone molds. Molds are generated by casting liquid silicone into custom 3D printed containers called metamolds. Metamolds automatically define the cuts that are needed to extract the cast object from the silicone mold. The shape of metamolds is designed through a novel segmentation technique, which takes into account both geometric and topological constraints involved in the process of mold casting. Our technique is simple, does not require to change the shape or topology of the input objects, and only requires off-the-shelf materials and technologies. We successfully tested our method on a set of challenging examples with complex shapes and rich geometric detail.

Source: ISTI Technical reports, 2018