Drop Out Bowl Mould

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In this SOLIDWORKS Tutorial, a ceramic bowl is designed in preparation for a mold. The bowl is designed using a revolved profile, lofted profiles, circular patterned bodies and the combine tool to create a flower like design. the bowl is designed as a model for molding in one part. This kind of mold is called a drop out mold, to create a mold like this the model can not have any under cuts. Think of it like a jelly mold, or a sand castle bucket, if these molds had an undercut the jelly or sand contents would not come away whole. The same can be said in ceramics, if a plaster model had undercuts and you mad a drop out mold from it, its likely that they would never come apart. To avoid this, you can test your models using Undercut Analysis.

The undercut analysis can highlight any issues on the model by shading the issues in red and appearing in a key as you work on the part, It is a very easy tool to use and understand for one part molds. Once the bowl model is complete, boss extrude and the combine and subtract tool is used to create the mold. An animation of the final mold can be found at the end of the tutorial. the animation was created with an exploded view, animated in motion analysis and exported to SOLIDWORKS Visualize for rendering.

An example of how the bowl would look as a final ceramic piece is shown in the rendering, this part can be created from the bowl mold model before the drafted extrusion is added to the part. This part can be shelled/hollowed out to create the cast bowl. The final rendering and animation was created in SOLIDWORKS Visualize.

Jade Wilson

Jade Wilson

I am a 3D Designer and SOLIDWORKS Blog Contributor from the UK. I am a self taught SOLIDWORKS user, and have been using it to inform and create my designs since 2012. I specialize in the design of Ceramics, Home Accessories and Wooden Toy Design.