10: Molding & Casting

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Flexible ExoSkeletons

In today's session we were taught on the use of inflatable bladders to inflate inside of two layers of fabric to make different curves and twists by altering the stiffness and orientation of the fabrics. For example, the speaker showed us that a flexible fabric under a stiff fabric with an inflated balloon inside would make a sort of finger that curved upwards. She also taught us how to used the Brother sowing machine. We were taught on using the zigzag method to sow these together because it held up better. Also, the lady that demonstrated us these things showed us how impactful this invention has been in the world. It has helped people with physical barriers use these inflatable components designed as a glove to, for example, write for the first time in 8 years.

Molding and Casting

The next part of today's session we were shown how to mold and cast. The process went a little like this: Get a container the size of the object you want to cast, put the object into the container, mix a 1 : 1 mixture of the two liquids. Then after stirring them very well pour them slowly into the container to make the mold. It was also important to use little clay sticks to make funnels for the molds. These were useful for the pouring into the mold process so cutting into it isn't necessary.

Sowing Inflatable Things

In today's lab session, I decided to do a replication of last session's curling, inflatable fabric. The demonstration was pretty simple. It was a process of measuring two pieces of fabric (stiff and stretchy) and then making a bladder according to this shape. The sowing method we were thought was backlooping first and then doing a zigzag stitch, and finally backlooping again. This worked pretty effectively. Anyway, my process was getting one layer of flexible fabric, then getting a layer of stiff fabric:

Then I sowed the outlines of these together. After doing so, I later melted two plastic layers together to make the bladder. This was extremely hard for me to get prefect because holes kept popping up if I kept the iron on it too long. Here is a picture of the plastic layers:

After finishing both, I put the bladder inside the textiles and used a small tube to fit into the bladder. I ziptied the tube airtight to the plastic with the addition of some tape, and air seemed to stay in. After filling it up with air many times it began to get small holes from the stretching of the bladder. Anyways, here are two pictures of the final project: