What did you cut today?

Finished painting the large sign I made this weekend. Going to do a thin black frame and hang it.

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Always happy to use my maslow… even for the simpelst things!
its awesome how accurate it can reproduce stuff :blush:

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Ready to put everything together.

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Awesome!

I am making this upgrade tomorrow,

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I’ve been experimenting with concrete forms cut from foam. So far have made a bird fountain:

and am currently working on some tap handles for a friend (2 part mold 5 inches in length, final pictures to come):

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and another pic of the bird fountain

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Did you ‘paint’ the foam with ‘olive oil’ to not stick, or is this one use only? I could build a house out of ‘air-create’ if this is reusable :blush:

it was one use only, so destroyed the mold when I took the concrete out. if I had wanted to reuse it I would have needed to put a draft angle in on all the parts, sealed the foam to a smooth surface, then added a mold release like olive oil. but, I only needed the one, and was eager to give it a try, so didn’t bother with any of that. It actually turned out much better than I had predicted.

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You have just destroyed my dream of building an air-create full scale Lego house. An amazing project nevertheless. Thanks for sharing!
Kind regards, Gero

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Your dream should still live. It sounds completely doable. and would be fun. Though, for reuse, I have had very good results from silicone molding. maybe cut the original from wood and create a silicone mold from it to make the concrete. Here’s a video of testing the fountain, in the basin you can see some concrete skulls that I cast using a silicone mold I made of a life-size resin skull (you can see the skull better on the step at the end of the video). Was for a halloween project, and turned out pretty well

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I build Maslow in a week and now make tests.

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Finished and mounted.

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That is just friggin awesome, I’m going to make some stuff with your technique. Any reinforcement in your mix?

Yes, i used some galvanized hardware cloth with half inch holes. I filled the mold half way then lay the hardware cloth on and continued filling. I didn’t get a picture of that step, unfortunately, but I’m sure you can picture a hexagonal portion of the hardware cloth with a hole cut in the middle. I left about an inch clear on all sides.

I also used high strength concrete, though i think Crack resistant might also be a good choice… or a mix of both.

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,

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Design the foam as part of your your house, like insulated concrete forms with an aircrete core.

Dawn dish soap foam and Portland cement!

I wanted to fill the wall stud cavities in my shop project with aircrete but ended up with closed cell spray in instead. The swamp rats didn’t want to help mix it :frowning:

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More fun with foam…

I’ve been wanting a laptop stand to get my work laptop out of the way since I use an external keyboard, and had intended on cutting something from wood. Unfortunately I didn’t have the wood I wanted, and didn’t want to take the time to get the wood, or to cut it. Then I remembered I had some left over 1 inch insulation foam from the bird fountain project and decided that it should be rigid enough to hold up a laptop, and could be cut in one pass. Thus, the other night I produced a laptop stand for myself to hold my work laptop nearly vertical.

Flush with that success, which netted me about 8 inches of desk space, I decided to make a riser for my personal laptop too. I really love cutting this foam since these designs take about 3-4 minutes a piece with a single pass using a 1/4 inch endmill. The 1x2 is just press fit in and has enough friction to hold the foam solidly.


ps, that desk is one I made in grad school for myself. Uses a single piece of 4x8 half inch MDF and is flat pack with no hardware needed. I have been meaning to work up a cnc file for it since that one was cut manually with a table saw, circular saw, and a drill. The astute reader may notice the top is painted in dry erase paint

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Cool project…also, how to lose your ring, step 1. :slight_smile:

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Took a little longer than I expected and several hiccups but it’s up and running.

Still have some tinkering to do and I think I set the ring too high so I need to fix that next.

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LOL, yeah that was the first time I’ve taken it off in several years. Was reading an instructable that linked to an elvish translator and thought it would be cool to inscribed something on the inside of the ring. It hurt so much taking it off that I was leary about putting it back on! Thankfully, a sizable application of hand soap made it easy enough and it is safely back on my finger :slight_smile: