silicone molding process

Here is the story of how I made multiple copies of my photo holders.

First I sketched how I wanted the photo holder to work. I was inspired by the idea of having it look like two little people were leaning against each other and holding the photo with their hands. Since the two little guys were identical halves, it was perfect for a multiples casting project.

I carved a hunk of wax using the bandsaw, jeweler's saw, Fordom (like a Dremel), X-acto knife, and smaller sharp carving blades. It was tricky to get the 3D geometry right (this is not the first piece of wax I attempted to carve this design in...).

Then I bent aluminum into a U shape large enough to contain the little guy, cut two side acrylic panels, and sprued my wax carving in the center (the pink wax above) to create a path for the wax to flow.
I filled the mold with silicone and got the bubbles out by letting it set up in a vacuum chamber.
Then I cut the mold basically in half, but actually the dissection was a little more complicated for this shape and it had about 4 main cuts. All this slicing ended up breaking the original wax guy, but that was fine because now with the mold I could inject lots and lots of little wax guys.
Here is the vacuum chamber, original blue wax carving, lots of attempted half-injected pink waxes, a couple of good ones, and the mold at the right.