Vacuum forming mold masters for making ice luminaries

thingiverse

I'm experimenting with ice luminary (also known as ice lantern) mold master prototypes for a friend at our local Makerspace. As I understand it, these mold masters get plastic drawn down over them using a vacuum forming machine. The vacuum formed plastic parts are then filled with water and frozen. Once the ice is removed from the mold, an LED "throwie" is placed in the pocket under each one. These designs have to be kept fairly simple so that both the mold master and the ice can be easily removed from the vacuum formed molds. They could also be used as-is if printed in T-Glase or some other transparent filament. But then, they could be made a lot more complicated because there would be no mold release constraints. I may add or delete files as they are tested. The cavity for the LED throwie is about 27.5mm in diameter. If you need a bigger hole for an LED tea lamp, I suggest scaling up the entire part before printing by the right amount. These parts were modeled in DesignSpark Mechanical.