Cast Lego Remover Tool

By Christopher Palazzo | Sunday, April 7, 2024

Overview and Goals

Never having cast anything before, I knew that I was in for a challenge. We were tasked with selecting a part of a maximum volume, creating a silicone mold, then casting plastic and metal parts. Since I’ve always been a fan of Lego, I decided to cast the Lego remover tool. I also choose this part because of its complex geometry, that way I had to think carefully about orientations and air bubbles. Overall this was an incredibly educating experience and added one more engineering technique to my toolbox!

Initial Sketches

Here is my initial idea for the mold. Due to the parts geometry, it was imperative that I thought about air pockets and detailed faces. Due to the pockets on the underside of the part, it was important that I poured the mold on the right side of the sketched box (I learned this after pouring mold the first time). The sprue and vent are also depicted in the sketch to account for air and pouring the cast material.

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Creating the Mold

After attaching the vent and sprue with some adhesive to the part and pouring the silicone in the correct direction, here is the resulting mold. While not perfect, as you can see a small flake from cutting the mold, it does seem to have kept all the details of the part.

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Plastic Casts

Here is the best plastic cast I made. The cast part is almost perfect, aside from a lack of material at the top of the part. The bottom also shows signs of an air bubble that was formed from the mold itself (this was solved by again, pouring the mold on the mold box’s side). Through plastic casting I learned that because of the geometry of the part, it was necessary to split the mold into three piceses to the lips and delicate features of the part.

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Metal Casting

Here are the results and some images of the metal casts. These are the parts directly out of the mold, as we were not told that we needed to clean or polish the parts. However, I will machine the sprue and other features to get a completely functional metal lego remover!

Metal Casting Images