Jen knew that she was onto something selling an all-natural soap for dogs at her local farmer's market. The idea started when Zola, Jen's boxer/pitbull mix, developed skin allergies. Using a homemade soap seemed to ease Zola's itch and improve her skin.
At first, Jen was using a generic paw-shaped mold she purchased from an online retailer to make the soap. In order to grow the business, Jen realized she needed a custom branded soap mold.
With concept art in hand, Jen turned to prototyper and product designer Fredrik Perman. After making a detailed computer design of the paw shape, Fredrik printed a plastic model using a 3-D prototyping printer that could be used to create silicone molds. When it came to choosing a silicone, Smooth-On's OOMOO 25 was a natural fit for the project.
"After a few hours of investigation," writes Fredrik, "we decided to go with their OOMOO line of 1:1 mix ratio silicone rubbers. The OOMOO line cures faster and provides high detail without the side effects of air bubbles (without need of vacuum chamber) in the final mold."
Jen's line of dog soaps, Pawfect Suds, has been a success ever since. Fredrik shared these pictures with us of the process in action.
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Concept art for an all-natural dog soap bar in the shape of a paw print.
A 3-D CAD (computer-aided design) rendering of the model that will be molded in silicone.
Using the CAD image, a model is printed in plastic using a 3-D prototyping printer.
The model is positioned into a mold box.
OOMOO 25 is chosen to make the silicone mold.
OOMOO 25 is poured and allowed to cure for 75 minutes.
Once the OOMOO 25 is cured, the model is removed from the mold.
The mold is cleaned and ready for casting soap.
Once the soap has set, it demolds easily from the silicone mold.
A ''paw''-fect reproduction!
From prototype to production, Pawfect Suds is now available in a number of varieties, including Tea Tree...
... and Lavender.
