Soft Robotic class

I have taken the class called “soft robotics” taught by Kari Love and found that doing it at home is relaxing to me. That class is really great and funny. I am sharing some projects I made at home.
Doing silicone casting is interesting. If you have not seen my first blog post about inflatable silicone, here is the link:

Silicone casting tutorial

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What I made

This is a simple trial of combining silicone with clay.

Material and cost:

total cost: more than $60

for making the mold for casting

Material	Where to buy	Price	Does ITP have it?
hotglue	amazon link	$15.99	ITP has
pen	I guess you have them at home		ITP has
airdry clay	amazon link	$22	ITP doesn’t have
airdry clay	amazon link	$22	ITP doesn’t have
sculptex clay	Sculptex Hard	$40	ITP doesn’t have

for silicone casting

Material	Where to buy	Price	Does ITP have it?
scale	a food scale. If you don’t have that will be fine.		ITP don’t have
air pump	anything that can pump air. The one for bycicle also would work but you have to pump gentlely. The one I am using: amazon link		ITP has
smoothon silicone	amazon link	$44.88	ITP has at soft lab
cups	I guess you have them at home		ITP has
an oven	I guess you have it at home. If you don’t. That is OK.		ITP has
one time gloves	I guess you have it at home.		ITP has

How to make it

First, you need to make the mold. I am making the mold with clay this time. The clay that I used is Sculptex clay, which is sulfur-free. This kind of clay also would not dry in the air. I am making a simple mold today.

Then I mix silione and pour silicone into the mold. If you don’t know about silicone casting, you can check my previous tutorial video: previous video. Then I put them into the oven. Remember to set the temperature low at 170 F and even below. Because the sculptex clay would melt in higher temprature and would not be able to be used again.
Then make the two part come together by mixing and adding some new silicone in between. We are now done with the silicone part. Then we can start to make the outside thing. I want to make a small house for the silione. I am using air dry clay for the sculpture. However, I used to try to make the inner mold for silicone with this clay, but the silicone that has contact with the clay would never cure. This kind of clay can only be in connection with silicone when the curing is done.

Since we are at home, we can grab everything to shape the clay. I am using knife and one chopstick.
I want to build a window for each air channel.
When you are doing your sculpture, it would be better to put it on a paper so that you can transfer it easily to other places. Transfer the whole piece into oven again. I am using the same temperature that is 170 F for speeding up the drying process. The drying time depends. In my case, it took about 2 hours for drying the clay. Then we can try to inflate the silione. The outside sculpture would be a restriction for the silicone. If you inflate it too much, the silicone would defeat the restrictions.

Ending

This is just for fun and also a small prototype for my final project of soft robotic. I am trying to build a sculpture combining siliocone and clay together to show my feeling of restriction of material and the freedom of my imagination to encourage myself during this period of time. Our mind is never restricted to a small house or apartment. I should think more than before.