Silicone Mold

I have successfully completed my first wax design project by getting a silicone mold of this ring I designed about a month ago from wax. It was a lot simpler than expected. Molds are made out of either rubber or silicone, and the price varies with the silicone costing slightly more, but with silicone, there is less shrinkage, whereas the rubber, you can lose up to 5% every time you cast it. You can choose what metal silver, gold or brass, and within golds, you can choose 14kt, 18kt, and 22kt, and a variety of colors like pink gold or white gold, etc. I found out that if you want to oxidize gold, 14kt works best, which makes sense because 50% is an alloy of silver and copper. The prices are charged according to the price of the metals of that day, so maybe if you're interested in casting gold, I would look up the prices, and check out the stock market.

I ended up buying some supplies because I couldn't make it to the studio. In retrospect, I think it may have been cheaper to do this in the studio, with all the proper supplies (i.e. flexible shaft and burrs). My Proxon, which was semi-professional, started to smoke up when I increased the speed to sand-off the remainder of the sprue, and the rings got hot really fast. I also bought these special polisher-discs that were too big for the ring, so I ended up hacking that and wasted half of them, and some of them started breaking because I didn't have the correct bit. Oh well, you live and you learn, lol. I am pretty pleased at how they came out, but would have lived to polish and stamp the inside of the ring with a logo (maybe next time).

Straight out of production. The sprue is that ~3mm rod that sticks out from the inside of the ring, which needs to be cut.

Finished pieces (sanded, oxidized and polished).