/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>122966
Here's what the soldering iron's copper tip looks like before and after.

1-2: corroded tip
3: ground down and sanded to shape
4: tinned, sponged, and ready for use

Since doing that last night I've been allowing the soldering iron to cool off every so often so this doesn't happen again. It's the cheap kind without a switch or trigger, so I was being lazy unplugging it while removing PCB components.

Nice, man, nice. Perhaps I should try something similar with mine to get a finer tip, it's a bit too blunt for my liking. I really should go out and get a dremel...

>>122992
Pick up some extra tips too. They are cheap and come in several styles. This flat wedge style I'm using is great for crossing small PCB components' leads and quickly releasing them from the PCB. Larger ones or ones with quite a few leads need solder wick used with them or they may heat up too much and be damaged and worthless.

If you have a flat head/slotted screwdriver that the tip is bent up because of too much cam out you can use sandpaper or a stone to reshape it to working order.

I can't say the same for Phillips head screwdrivers though. :/

Do I post this kind of stuff here or on /ic/?

I've never seen anything else than drawings on /ic/

>>123070
> /ic/
>Your egg picture isn't anatomically correct, you need to go to medschool before you're allowed to allowed to do anything involving likelyness to human bodyparts. Also read 200 pages of this guide.

Post them here.

>>123084
>you need to work 7 years before you can properly render an egg
>also go read loomis
/ic/ can be real shitty sometimes

>>123070
Seems fine to me. How did you make it and what did you make it from?

>>123086
>>123084
That's exactly what I'd expect from them.

>>123090
I'm not too sure about the actual name, but it's paper-ish clay. Won't buy more of that, way too soft.

I hammered a u-nail into a wooden piece so I wouldn't waste too much of the clay. Then simply worked from reference(it's a behelit).

The paint is drying overnight, just need to paint the top part golden.

>>123108
Modeling clay for ready-to-be-fired clay?

I have a bunch of potting clay and clay dug from under my house foundation this year. The foundation clay was gray white so its fairly good quality. I want to get a furnace set up and fire some stuff. I made a little Cthulhu bust and some generic pottery out of pond bottom clay I dug from near here. I fired a couple pieces in a wood stove as bisque ware. Here's pic. The pot is fired to bisque and the bust is still green.

>>123130
>Modeling clay OR ready-

fixed

>>123130
Modeling clay.

It reminded me of chewing gum mixed with paper, very different from normal clay.
Real bitch to mold. It kind of went back to its previous shape after shaping it.

>>123134
>It kind of went back to its previous shape after shaping it.

Sounds horrible. Despite that, it looks like you did a good job. It's cleaner looking than my Cthulhu bust. Which I guess is my first clay sculpture of any kind lol.

>>123070
>>123130
singling you two out cause you look like you know what you're doing

i want to make little sculptures that i can then cast (at uni), what kind of clay would you guys suggest for making small things? pic related, obviously i'm not expecting to be able to make something like this straight away, but something of that scale/detail one day.

or: if i've got it totally wrong and clay will implode when you heat it up and all to make a cast out of it slap me

>>123155
let's try that again

>>123155
Yeah, I'm going to be making my own forge and foundry; even a solar foundry for soft metals like zinc. Pottery clay will work. Explosions in clay is caused by air pockets, moisture, and uneven heating. So, make sure you don't have air pockets, that you allow the clay to dry for several day, and you heat the clay slowly for a couple of hours (conventional oven at 200F will work to help remove moisture). It's the steam created from retained moisture that is the biggest problem. Get your clay mold good and hot and pour in the molten metal.

To prevent air bubbles in your metal, while you pour it into the mold, you can place the entire mold on a vibrating table of some sort. You can make one by putting an off set weight on a motor shaft (like in a vibrator/personal messager) then attaching it solidly to the top of the table or board you have your mold on. That board of table top needs to be loose enough to actually vibrate of course. The smaller the shaft and weight the quicker the vibrations. If you don't want to go into that trouble, you can gently rap the table surface to cause the same effect, but you may need someone else to do that if you are pouring at the same time.

I recommend starting with really soft metals and low temps like using soldering wire or perhaps modern pewter. You can then make silicone forms if you wanted to; using regular window/house silicone, but you must allow it to cure 100% otherwise the metal poured into it can move around where it has not dried yet.

You need to use a lost wax method obviously, which can be done in the oven with both clay or silicone molds prior to metal pouring. Once you have finally item cooled you can make another mold off of it, but that mold will have seems and not be using lost wax method.

>>123155
I'm not that deep into clay I'm afraid.

But at least I can give you the tip to use a brush for smaller details. Brushing the scraped clay away. Rounded needles dipped in water is great for the details themself.

>>123199
Good tips. Dental tools are great for details in clay sculpture and wax for lost wax casting.

>>123186
i'm a total noob so this is a bit beyond me, i've saved it for later when i hopefully get more familiar. thanks a bunch for the info it really is rad to have this kind of stuff written down from somebody's own experience to refer to. the casting workshop at uni is overseen by a guy so i'll get him to show me how to do it the first few times.
getting a tad lost in your first few sentences: would it make sense to make the initial sculpture (that the mould comes from) out of clay? i'm guessing there's some sort of heating up process in sand casting

>>123199
rounded needles! hadn't thought of that, cheers man

>>123212
It depends on what kind of mold you are making. With a lost wax mold you make the sculpture out of wax first. Then you have several options for the mold material that goes around it depending on the detail level of your mold and several other factors. You can pour plaster over it, leaving pour holes where ever you think you need it on one side. Then you put it in an oven upside down with the pour holes facing down. The wax melts and pours into a container. Then you pour your metal into the mold. You can use silicone or even a special clay slip, in place of the plaster, but clay slips are for patient people. If you are making a mold to reuse the mold then you make a clay sculpture and pour whatever material you want around it to make the mold (a metal with a higher melting temp than what you'll be using for instance.) You'll need to leave places for seems and hinges of course. Often times you don't make the entire sculpture mold as one mold for complex or big items. You design it so you can open the mold once your secondary metal is cooled inside. Then you shape the sculpture so that you remove the seems. The tighter the seems the less shaping you'll need to do later.

With a clay mold you'll normally lose the mold when you extract your item. with a silicone mold you can often time save your mold for later use, though you'll need to carefully cut it away in suck a manner that you can easily close it up. for the next pouring. Seems may be larger too.

Sorry, if my grammar, spelling, or wording are getting off, I've been up for 48 hours.

>>123241
Yeesh, forgot a link,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_casting

It shows some fairly detailed images of casting.

>>122966
>>122969
>>122994

You know, and decent soldering iron doesn't have this problem.

>>123286
There's no temp regulator and the soldering iron has no off switch. So, it heats up far too much on long jobs. It is a $5 soldering iron.

I have an $80 iron in storage that I rarely use. It's the kind with the trigger, light, magnifier shield, and 10 styles of tips. I also have a ColdHeat soldering iron (b-day gift), but I can't seem to find it for the life of me. I think someone tossed it out (good riddance). I didn't like it because the tips were so fragile that bumping or setting the unit down too hard would often times break the tips. It worked like a charm for individual leads though. It's use was extremely limited, especially so if you accidentally touched two leads at the same time it'd instantly fry everything because the tip uses electric to heat the solder. I also have a butane soldering iron, but I've not used it all that much. I recall it taking forever to heat up properly.

I'd prefer getting the style I have now with one of those big temperature controlled bases.

OP, that is the stupidest fucking thing. How about putting on some goggles?

>>124141
This. There are multiple types of safety glasses/goggles. Even if you're too cheap to buy some, the screen doesnt need to be attached to the dremel, it just needs to be between the dremel and your eyes. It'd make a lot more sense to make a face visor with your cd case and a piece of elastic, instead of drilling a fucking hole in your dremel.

Pic related, it only costs fucking $4. I'm sure you already have the derpface to go with it.

>>122966
>>124183
>>124170

I already own a face shield and safety goggles. I really hate using them. They get in the way often and tend to slip. I've even had things hit my body and bounce up under the shield and smack me in the face and eyes, same for the air holes in the safety goggles.

so, I opt to have a shield right down at the work where it deflects everything and leaves me without needing to wear something on my face.

>>123070
And I'm done.

Well, I want to paint it properly. This paint didn't want to stick, even after 4layers.

>>124209
Howabout you learn about primer

>>124215
It wasn't even proper paint.

It's used to paint fabric, it was all I had access to.

>>124209
That looks pretty cool indeed.