Modeling Molding, and Milling

[Anonymous]

I have had some trouble converting .STL to the proper format so I can invert the object to make a mold. Does anyone have experience sorting this out.

Cris

[wispoxy]

Don't you need to define the mold boundary by placing a box around the object first?

[Anonymous]

I have done that a few times, and I get a distorted image which never works
out. What other tools besides pull are used to get the correct shape I
have tried a few methods with no success. Is there a video on how to
create a mold from an .stl object?

[Anonymous]

STL is not a brilliant file format to create a solid model out of.. If you can get your hands on a STEP or IGES or other non-polygonal file of the part that would make things easier for you.

From STL you can convert the mesh to Brep. This will create a face for each of the polygons in the source STL file. You might first want to run the STL through an app like Meshmixer to check if its watertight and fix any holes in the mesh if needed. This ensures you will get a solid body out the conversion in Fusion.

Once you have your solid body, you can follow this simple tutorial from Autodesk I found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCPm6z5zbgY

Hope that helps,

Niels

[TrippyLighting]

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@Anonymous wrote:

STL is not a brilliant file format to create a solid model out of.

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That is the understatement of the week 😉

A highly triangulated mesh is the possible worst scenario to make a solid model out of.

[Phil.E]

Seconding what Trippy said.

You want to make a mold which usually requires effort to make a smooth model, for lack of a better word. An STL, with all the facets, is not a good candidate for "smooth". I take it your machining method will average the surface facets into a smooth approximation of the triangulated faces?

Thanks,