Personal Brand Stamps
Alexa and I both have aspirational businesses we'd like to pursue some day . Alexa's is Chunk Belly Baking Company, named after our dog Jules. Mine is a yet to be named hardwood long board company (currently thinking Apostrophe Boards). Alexa did some branding for "Yeti Skateboards" and sketched out a logo.
Required Resources: 2 hours, $20
Size: 5" Diameter
Materials: Baltic Birch Plywood, 2 Part Casting Silicone
Tools: Laser cutter
New Techniques:
Mold Making with the Laser: I've made molds for castings in the past and went the route of hogging them out on the CNC router. This is time consuming and allows for limited fine detail due to the minimum feature size define by the diameter of the end mill. I was scouring the internet for projects to try out and saw one where they made casting molds with laser etchings. The key was that the settings on the laser had been turned up high enough to cut recessed pockets. I did a test cut on the Glowforge and found that the default settings were quite close to working. I etched Alexa's logo into some ply and then did a trial cast with a two part casting silicone I bought on Amazon. After 4 hours of setting time, I removed the cast from the mold, pressed it into an ink paid and Voila, custom stamp. Alexa will use it to mark the boxes and bags she uses to package her baked goods. I will use mine on a skateboard.
Lessons Learned:
Wear Gloves: I ordered the casting rubber from Amazon and when it arrived, I noticed the box looked a little "greasy". When I opened it, I realized why, Part of the 2 part mixture had exploded out of its container and was drenching the box. There was enough material still in the bottle to salvage a casting run, so I decided to clean up the containers instead of throwing it out and asking for a refund from Amazon. My mistake was not putting on rubber gloves to clean up this goopy mess. The pink slime is not water soluble and when it got on my hands, it took 30 minutes of scrubbing with gritted soap to get it off. I've made this mistake with other petroleum based products (wood stain, spray poly, etc) and every time I am disappointed in myself that I didn't learn from my previous errors.
