Following my junior year, I needed some sort of present for two of my recently graduated friends, but wanted to give them something a bit more personal and unique than the average gift. I decided I wanted to aim for something that was personal and creative but still wouldn’t stick out in your average home or office environment.
I decided to go for a modern but simplistic look here - something that should hopefully look good regardless of where its placed. I chose concrete for my medium and wood for my base.
As these were extremely last minute gifts (made the week of the party), there wasn’t much time for getting fancy with my methods. I decided that single-use 3D printed molds would work quite nicely, as they’re not only the fastest to model and print, but simply also because these molds just had no further usefulness and wouldn’t need to be reused.
The pouring process certainly had a slight learning curve to it. I tried to overfill the molds in hopes of minimizing voids in the final product, which seems to have worked to some degree, although some small voids were still present in the final product.
The mold removal process was a messy but efficient matter. Although the PLA molds took some decent coaxing to remove, the material underneath was left in better shape than I expected, with very few fractures or chips.
As can be seen, there are a few air pockets and irregularities in the final products, but these imperfections started to grow on me with time. In the future, either mixing a slightly more watery concrete or having a slower setting mix should help to prevent these air pockets from forming.
The concrete performed quite well as a whole, and due to its porous manner can even offer the option to be stained a different shade, if desired. The wood bases had a burned finish applied and then were sealed. The last detail to add to each was a brass heart with a punched in “DG”.