Adam Savage has a bunch of old (decades) silicone molds sitting doing nothing. Silicone, sadly, degrades not just from use, but over time; a mold that is years old will almost certainly fall into ruin if you try to cast a part using it. So, if you have an old mold that you want to get parts out of, what to do? Well, if you are well connected you get someone to CAT scan the mold, create an STL model of the mold, convert the hollow space within into a solid model, then 3D print. Easy! Anybody can do it! But here’s the thing: each scan the CAT scanner makes takes 30 seconds… and each mold could take 1500 scans to complete. So… twelve and a half solid hours on a CAT scanner.
Huh.
One response to “This seems expensive”
Here is an idea. Scan AMT molds of the Enterprise. Section Gary Kerr’s blueprints in a similar fashon…and a CNC machine lathes out the difference.