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This little project was born out of a desire to experiment with casting and machining clear urethane resin. I was curious how well the urethane would stick to something mixed in with it, and how well it would machine. I did't have too much of a vision going in, and mostly played it by ear.
I started with a bag of cheap beads from Michael's mixed in with Task 9 urethane resin from Smooth-On. The curing process of this resin is exothermic, and ended up warping the plastic cup it was in. Once the mixture was solid, I machined a 25mm circular mount that would fit in a collet for easy fixturing on the lathe. This was my lazy way of avoiding installing a chuck on the lathe. There was no way the resin was going to come out of the warped cup, so I just had to machine the plastic cup off.
On the lathe I drilled and bored the inside, with the help of easy conversational programming on the Centroid controller. I then manually added some grooves and chamfers to add some aesthetic shape to the cylinder. Before parting off the piece, I hand-polished the clear resin to a shine.
In the end my little pot/cup was the perfect size for a candle, so I ran with that idea and melted wax from an old candle into it. When lit, the light shining through the translucent resin and beads creates a neat stained-glass effect.
I started with a bag of cheap beads from Michael's mixed in with Task 9 urethane resin from Smooth-On. The curing process of this resin is exothermic, and ended up warping the plastic cup it was in. Once the mixture was solid, I machined a 25mm circular mount that would fit in a collet for easy fixturing on the lathe. This was my lazy way of avoiding installing a chuck on the lathe. There was no way the resin was going to come out of the warped cup, so I just had to machine the plastic cup off.
On the lathe I drilled and bored the inside, with the help of easy conversational programming on the Centroid controller. I then manually added some grooves and chamfers to add some aesthetic shape to the cylinder. Before parting off the piece, I hand-polished the clear resin to a shine.
In the end my little pot/cup was the perfect size for a candle, so I ran with that idea and melted wax from an old candle into it. When lit, the light shining through the translucent resin and beads creates a neat stained-glass effect.
(Hover over images to see captions, click to enlarge.)
