PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

As silicone is a soft material it’s helpful to place some marks to be sure you are cutting in the rigth place. Pens work better than markers on the silicone surface.

You can use a cutter or scissors to split parts. Make sure your cutter edge is as sharp as possible. I prefer to use cutters because it’s easier to get a clean cut.

Before joining the different parts check if they fit enough. Don’t worry if there is 1 or 2 mm gap between parts because you can fill it with raw silicone.

The best way to place the raw material on the edges is doing some ‘spaghetti’. Just roll a small amount on a clean and flat surface. The diametre depends on the gap between parts.

Place the ‘spaghetti’ in the edge of one of the parts. Push it slightly to prevent it from moving during pasting process.

PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

Put together the parts. Once you are sure they are in the right place push both edges to make the gap as narrow as possible . Afterwards you can remove the excess of raw silicone in the paste area.

More surface to paste means a stronger junction. Extend the silicone as much as possible .

Raw silicone can also be used to fill empty spaces. If you need the prototype to contain liquids it’s important to check the joints to prevent leaking.

Oven must be preheated up to 180 ºC before ‘cooking’ the raw silicone. It takes a couple of minutes to harden the material. Sometimes is easier to put the prototype into the oven each time a part is pasted and sometimes it’s possible to paste all parts and ‘cook’ the whole thing at the same time.

PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

It’s important to know that silicone expands when heated. Sometimes the joint between pasted edges is not as good as needed. It’s easier to prevent this using more raw material and removing the excess after the oven. You can also cut the wrong areas and repeat the process as much times you need .

As silicone is a soft material sometimes the prototypes are too much weak in some areas. Raw material can be also used to reinforce the areas where you need more structure. This helps to improve design because you can add material and test if the prototype is working well.

Several tools can be used to shape the raw silicone. In fact any tool used to shape clay can be used with silicone too.

PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

If it’s not possible to use existing products sometimes you will need to work with flat silicone sheets, drawing or printing some flat patterns from a 3D file and build a prototype like a fabrics suit.

Check that edges are fitting well before pasting the parts. If they do you won’t need too much raw silicone. If you are using a small amount of silicone it's important to secure the area during oven time.

Push both edges to make the gap as narrow as possible. The idea is to use the minimum amount of raw silicone needed.

Remove the excess of silicone to have a flat surface. You can use staples to fix the parts in the right position. This step is very important if you are pasting more than 2 parts at the same time or in complex developments. In this photos you can see we are making a cilinder from a flat sheet.

PROTOTYPING WITH SILICONE

To keep parts in the right position I use to put some clothes pegs or similar (if used inside the oven use only metallic or wooden ones). This is very helpful on difficult areas.

Depending on the size and shape of the prototype it’s not possible to use the stapler. In this case you can ‘nail’ the staples by hand.