Hi EDES 210, today I bring you a simple yet extremely fun project involving both art and engineering! Unlike most projects, this one required us to follow very specific instructions but gave students more flexibility in terms of decoration!
The first step of the process was to make a mold, which seemed simple at first but surprisingly took a good amount of trial and error! Many students that I talked to had made a mold during the tutorial session, but needed to make another mold to achieve better results! Anyways, here is a picture of the mold I made, which doesn’t seem like a whole lot yet but just you wait!
While this step of the process was a bit more messy than I would’ve preferred, it was certainly a lot of fun! Following this pivotal step, I needed to mix around 20 grams of water with 70 grams of the cement mixture in order to create the material we needed for casting! Once the mixture reached a certain thickness, I then proceeded to pour it into the mold and waited for it to dry (took around 24 hours)
Above is a picture of one of the finished objects after it had dried and luckily it turned out well! While it did have some minor imperfections, they were easily fixed with a little sanding! Now ready for painting, I decided to go for a bright blue color similar to that of one of my past projects (again required some drying, but much quicker this time)
Using the provided stand used in prior steps (which was very helpful by the way) I managed to get an even coat of spray paint across both of the objects, maintaining the surface details in the process! After seeing the results, I was very pleased with how the project turned out and was much simpler than I had thought! Thanks for reading!
Here is the cost accounting for this project (approximately $79)
Labor – Student employment is around $14 an hour and the project took an hour or so
Materials – Ingredients used for creating the mold costs around $20 a bag and the cement mixture costs around $25 (assuming you purchase a smaller bucket from the Home Depot)
Tools – The scale and cups used in the project cost around $20 in total (from Amazon)
Here is a picture of my workspace after I cleaned it up!
