Fire Pit Skulls

The first will be the quick and easy version in w After that I'll show you the process I used to create an original skull from digital sculpt to three part mold design to 3D print to cement casting. If you look closely you can see the separation lines from the original factory mold here. Dividing the mold in three parts makes it possible to separate it to remove the casting without destroying the mold. Because t Once you have established where you want to divide the mold so that each segment will have no undercuts you can drill a hole for the pour and then cut it apart using either a utility knife or whatever method works best for you. Next you can carefully tape the parts back together keeping the seams as tight as possible. Refractory cement is a special type of cement that is resistant to spalling or cracking in For typical applications The lower the moisture content the stronger the final product will be. In t Depending on the size of your casting it needs to cure for at least 24 hours before you try to remove it from the mold. After that I recommend letting it dry out for another day or so before you toss it into your fire pit. W ZBrush allows you to use various tools to work a virtual ball of clay into a 3D design. I'm brand new to ZBrush but there are a lot of great tutorial videos on YouTube that can help you get started if you want to try it out. I'm just going to give a quick overview of the 3D modeling techniques I used to create the mold for people who already have at least some familiarity with 3D design and printing and maybe want to use this as a j I'm definitely not qualified to be doing any in depth tutorials in t Alternatively you can just download the files I've included in the description to 3D print your own mold. After finis The decimation master tool allows you to reduce the n For the next step Imported that file into Fusion 360. The skull is still too complex to work with in Fusion so I'm going to move to the mesh editing environment and remesh reducing the now I can convert the mesh into a solid using the convert to brep function. To create a negative of the skull I placed it within a solid block and then used the combine function with the skull as a cutting tool to remove a vol I then drew lines to define the 3 segments of the mold and used the split body function. Next I cut away a hole for pouring in the cement. For t I removed a lot of the outer material from the mold that would have been wasted. I added some tabs to help key the individual parts together for alignment and I designed a spout as a separate component that I'm just going to super glue on after printing. After some sanding and gluing on the spout I sprayed the parts with several coats of shellac to seal the grooves of the print. I used some Vaseline on the mating surfaces of the mold to make it easier to separate later and to prevent some of the seeping since my tolerances weren't great. I also sprayed the inside with mold release to prevent adhesion with the casting. There are a lot of lubricating products you could use for t A vibrating palm sander with the paper removed worked really well to pack the material down into the details of the mold and bring air bubbles to the surface. The refractory cement will tend to shrink somewhat as liquid rises to the top and evaporates during the curing process. So overfilling into the spout provides some additional material that will prevent a dimple or void from forming at the top of the casting. The resulting col