Mold Tooling: "Allen" Robot

Mass manufacturing project. I took a small robot, "Allen," from a hand sketch to a CAD model, then to molds for casting his parts in volume.

Process

I split the robot into parts and designed 3D printed molds for each, using FDM and SLA printing. I cast the parts, then trimmed, drilled, sanded, and assembled them into a lineup of robots.

Where it failed

Some PETG molds failed and several early casts came out badly, like the purple pair in the gallery. Those failures drove the mold revisions.

Measuring the run

I measured part dimensions across the production run (shaft diameters, the chest, the boots) and plotted them to see how consistent the parts were and to spot outliers.