Home Materials Procedure Design and Testing Instructions

Procedure:

1. Children use pre-made parts as the master part of the molding process to create their own molds.

2. Either purchased play dough or homemade play-dough can be used as the molding material. See instructions at bottom of webpage on how to make your own play-dough.

1. The pre-made parts are imprinted into play-dough and will be used to make the actual molds.

2. Paraffin is then melted and the liquid paraffin is poured into the play-dough molds. Children can also use the polyurethane rubber mold that we created in the lab place of the play-dough molds.

Polyurethane Rubber Mold

3. Once the paraffin hardens, the pieces can be taken out and set aside (Cooling the paraffin, in a refrigerator or by some other means speeds this process up significantly)

4. To make the body, the play-dough that was used to make the molds can be rolled up into a ball (or more elaborate shape if desired).
5. The pieces (sunglasses, nose, and mustache) are designed with notches in them, so they can simply be placed into the play-dough appropriately to make a Mr. Tomato Head

Carnegie Mellon University

39-245 Rapid Prototype and Design

May 2006