Silicon Mold Making

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards

  • 1. Empowered Learner -- Students leverage technology to an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goal, informed by the learning sciences.
  • 1a. Students articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes.
  • 1b. Students understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose and use/troubleshoot current technologies.
  • 1c. Student are able to transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies.
  • 2. Digital Citizen -- Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that safe, legal and ethical.
  • 2a. Students engage in positive, safe, legal and ethical behavior when using technology, including social interactions online or when using networked devices.
  • 2b. Students demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of copyright and sharing intellectual property.
  • 3. Knowledge Constructor -- Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.
  • Students plan and employ effective research strategies to locate information and other resources for their intellectual or creative pursuits.
  • 4. Innovative Designer -- Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.
  • 4a. Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving problems.
  • 4b. Students select and use digital tools to plan and manage a design process that considers design constraints and calculated risks.
  • 4c. Students develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.
  • 5. Creative Communicator -- Students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.
  • 5a. Students choose the appropriate platforms and tools for meeting the desired objectives of their creation or communication.
  • 5b. Students create original works or responsibly repurpose or remix digital resources into new creations.
    • *All standards listed above are based on the ISTE standards.
    The teacher demonstrates setting up and measuring out material to make silicon molds of our oil-clay prototypes.

    First, a wall is made: Either with oil based clay or a paper cup cut to size and hot-glued to a board.


    Next, the silicone is mixed:

    The High Temp Silicone we use is mixed in a 10:1 ratio.
    10 parts silicone to 1 part catalyst.
    (So if you're using 80 ML of silicone, you'd mix in 8 ml of catalyst.)

    Students are to make a mold for their Oil-clay project so we can cast it in resin and in Metal.

    Evaluation:
    2 points -- Mold walls made correctly
    3 points -- Silicone mixed and poured correctly
    2 points -- Minimal bubbles in the mold
    3 points -- Mold cleaned up and deflashed properly

    10 points total


    Illustration 1 below is the original piece made with Chavant clay.


    Illustration 2 below shows the silicone mold and plaster mother-mold with the finished cast piece.


    Below is a Durometer chart. Our silicone is a High Temp., high durometer RTV silicone. Ours falls between 40 and 60 on the Shore A scale.



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