Week 4: July 5 - July 7

After the two meetings last week, I was ready to walk in to WIMR and produce a successful calibration mold. Luis and Armando accompanied me, and together we figured out how to use the new vacuum chamber. Immediately, we could see that this was a vast improvement from the vacuum chamber we had been using. Instead of only being able to form a weak vacuum which required us to accompany the chamber so that we could continuously reform the vacuum, this vacuum chamber enabled us to form a strong vacuum that we didn't need to sit by, as it didn't have leaks. Nonetheless, likely due to how I glued the walls of the box, the air extraction process still took a considerable amount of time even though the result was bubble-free. Thursday morning, however, I learned that this was not the only issue that resulted from the box' walls.

An Unpleasant Surprise

Thursday morning, I walked in with high hopes that the mold would come out with no bubbles. The curing process itself was of little concern—that is, until I saw the mold. Silicone was everywhere: all over the box, all over the hot plate, all over the table. Judging by the small amount of silicone that had remained inside of the box, it seemed that overnight, the heat had caused glue at a point on one of the walls to separate. On the bright side, it was cured silicone, so cleaning it up wasn't difficult at all. On top of this, after removing the remaining silicone from the box, it was clean and bubble free. Rafael noted that it would have been the best model he'd have seen thus far. I proceeded to make a new box, this time doing a better job of gluing the walls. On Friday, I repeated the process, leaving the silicone to cure over the weekend.