Hello there.......Silicone!

Let's Make Robots
1

Hello guys and hello there, Silicone.

THE (summed-up) ADVENTURE:

After searching a couple of shops in Kathmandu, I narrowed my search down to ones that dealt in paint, hardware, etc. like stuff. I also found a tube of silicone in one of them and that was exactly what I needed to mould a couple of tracks for Nano Rover in his new MB-3434 look.

resibond-3010-250x250.jpg

Any silicone pack should do. This one I have is named "Resibond" and it's from an Indian Company.

 

FIRST OUTINGS WITH SILICONE:

Well, I didn't manage to squeeze it out of the tube as the silicone seemed too thick to be able to come out of the nozzle. I might have unfortunately laid my hands on an outdated pack. So, I used the "toothpick-trick" to apply the silicone manually on Lumi's 3D-printed "track-maker".

silicone_mould_track_1.jpg
silicone_mould_track_1.jpg3648×2736 1.8 MB

It looked better than I had initially thought. It was time to let it cure. The best time is around 24 hours, but I couldn't wait any longer than 12 hours to start peeling the track off. 

 

THE RESULTS: 

silicone_mould_track_2.jpg
silicone_mould_track_2.jpg3648×2736 1.91 MB

It turned out well. And the first track, although not having the smoothest of edges, came out unbroken and with a pretty much even circumference. One more track, and they'll be ready to pop onto Nano Rover.It's entirely an MB-3434 model, so I am just following Lumi's footsteps.

2

Well, that is a good way to

Well, that is a good way to show different techniques to cast silicon tracks. That tubes are meant to be used together with those gun handles which appies much more force to the bottom as you can do with your thumbs :slight_smile:

However, you’ve got t done, nice! Another option would be to find silicone or latex tube with the right diameter and cut small rings from it.