Before the plaster is even mixed, the mold maker is looking for undercuts on the model and deciding where a two-piece or four-piece split needs to go. Soft soap or mold release goes on in thin coats. Natches get carved so the halves register. Plaster is weighed out, sifted into water, left to slake, then stirred by hand until the surface just loses its shine, and the pour has to happen in the short window before it starts to thicken.
Refinement is where the slow judgment lives. A finished mold gets its seams scraped so the cast piece will not show a ridge, its pour hole shaped with a surform, and its edges beveled so it does not chip. Test casts come out, get inspected, and the mold goes back to the bench for another pass. We capture this through head cameras on the mold maker and fixed cameras over the bench and the plaster station, across full shifts in working mold shops.
The dataset arrives as episodes per mold section, with steps in plain language: model prep, cottle setup, plaster mixing, pour, strip, seam scraping, test cast, inspection. Each episode carries a success or failure tag tied to whether the mold produced an acceptable test cast. Optional object and tool tracking covers the hands, the model, the cottles, and the surform. Output goes into your schema and your storage.
Mold makers on camera are consented and paid, and everything is cleared for commercial model training. Request a sample and expect it within a business day.