Author：MakerPRO／賴佩萱

When I walked into "Fancymelon" workshop, I saw cartons full of cartons on the shelves, labeled with soft pottery tools, mold turning tools, soap making tools and other materials, as well as ice sealing molds, air guide molds, crystal bubble original molds and other series of molds, which made me think that I was in a production factory.

After entering the workshop, we were greeted by Mr.Guigui, known as the most famous turn over mold teacher. He led us into a classroom with yellow and orange walls. It turns out that in addition to making silicone molds and plastic materials, "Fancymelon" also offers a wide range of long-term and short-term handcraft courses. He is also host of the "什麼都翻什麼都不奇怪-矽膠翻模團", an influential Facebook community with over 10,000 members.

New skills of silicone mold flipping

Talking about his journey into the field of mold flipping, Mr. Guigui shared with us that he started out as an electronic technology adhesive, and among the adhesives, "silicone mold" is an indispensable material. He then said that he has been working in this industry for 16 years, and as Taiwan's electronics industry faces the need for transformation, he chose to connect with technical education and make "material" the direction of application in technical education, because he believes that "silicone molding" is a very important function in both personal workshops and corporate organizations.

Quigui teacher talked about the mental journey to devote himself to the field (Photo: Owen Qu)

In addition to his role as a corporate director, Mr. Quigui is also a lecturer in vocational training teacher from "Workforce Development Agency Development, Ministry of Labor". He regularly collaborates with various guilds and associations to provide technical education courses on 3D printing, mold flipping, and post-production applications. He enthusiastically told us that by combining the popular 3D printing with mold turning technology, many kinds of finished products can be made, such as dolls, candles, handmade soaps, and planted utensils.

"It's easy to get started in mold making, as long as you understand the properties of the materials and the techniques used, you can easily learn them. He also emphasized that the skills needed to turn a mold are "design skills," and that it is only when you can design that you can turn the ideas in your head into a prototype.

"fancymelon" exhibit their creations (Photo: Owen Ou)

A good combination for silicone remolding & vacuum forming

Conventional silicone molds are made by fixing the sample mold (or master mold), taking its shape with silicone and making an outer mold, then filling it with a more permanent material such as PU (Poly) or Epoxy (Epoxy) to make a solid prototype of the item.

Mr. Quigui said that after he contacted MY YARD's smart vacuum molding machine six months ago, he saved a lot of money on materials because he only needed to use a small amount of silicone to wrap the prototype to become the outer packaging, and then used the molding machine to blister it to become the mold.

Teacher Guigui demonstrate it on site. With FORMART, only a small amount of silicone is needed to wrap the prototype.（Photo：Owen Ou）

Mr. Quigui shared that the vacuum forming machines he used in the past had to rely on experience to operate during the whole process, but FORMART would automatically recognize the sheet, and through the intelligent LCD screen, it can display the temperature and time required for the plastic shell forming of the sheet. The operation is also quite user-friendly, and there are SOPs of forming steps on the screen for users to refer to. In addition, the machine also has two brushless cooling fans and an auxiliary demoulding function, which can assist in separating the mold and the blister. FORMART not only improve the efficiency of his teaching,  and also allows students not to be at a loss when using it, and to resolve the embarrassment of beginners.

The user friendly interface of FORMART will display the heating temperature without manual temperature measurement（Photo：Owen Ou）

Although this machine has a great interface design and a wide range of materials, But Guigui teacher felt that "FORMART is a bit heavy!" The 25 Kg weight was a bit inconvenient for him as his course could run through the north and south Taiwan. However, he also explained that "maybe because of the heavier weight, the machine The body will be more stable and will not cause deviation on the blister, and the details of the finished product will appear."

Conclusion

Teacher Guigui said that technical and vocational education is a very important in Taiwan, but because of the large number of students and the lack of resources in the society, the actual application of learning and society will be different. At present, the use of vacuum forming machine combined with mold turning technology can be a good introductory teaching aid; for makers and creative professionals, molding machine and mold turning technology are also a perfect match, in addition to helping them realize their creativity and produce diversification. The production of diversified creations is also a big boost to maker market.

（This article is reproduced with permission from MakerPRO，Original link）