Making the heart beat

This was the most difficult part of the process, because what i had anticipated wasn’t what happened in the final stages. I wanted to use a combination of pulleys and a motor operated by a motor and a pressure pad. I didn’t want to use a servo motor as i had only seen the motor attached to a sonic sensor and it seemed to be unpredictable in its movements. So i opted for a more analog approach. However the rubber was so thick for the battery powered motor to cope it stopped working when i couldn’t pull the strings that attached the heart to the motor. I did get this to work slightly but it wasn’t the movement i anticipated, so at the last minute i changed my plans and opted to use the Ardunio board, i downloaded a simple program to move the servo motor back and forth. I stuck the motor to the plinth and threaded the fishing wire through the heart and it worked perfectly.

Rubber heart

After the first failed attempt to make a latex heart, my house mate Tracey gave me a small block of volconized rubber. She had it left over from an old University project, i tried looking online to find some more of the rubber as there was only enough to make one side and ideally i wanted to make two sides of the heart to make it whole. However it proved somewhat difficult as the rubber is used in industry and can not just be bought in an art shop. So i could only make one side of the heart.

Creating the latex heart

Now i had the mold of the pigs heart, i then had to create the latex heart from this. I first used some pouring latex i had bought from an art shop. I added red paint to the latex so that when it had dried it would be red. I built up the layers and painted on one layer at first, waited for it to dry then painted on anther layer. Again i waited for this to dry and painted on another layer. I put it to dry in the fridge when i was happy with the amount of layers i had built up. After it had dried I peeled it away from the mold, but the material wasn’t strong enough to hold it shape and didn’t really resemble the heart which i wanted it to look like. So i had to find another material to make the heart from.

Making the heart pt.2

As the first attempt to create a mold of a pigs heart failed i had to think of an alternative way. I thought back to my childhood when i had made some clay-like jewelery from plaster of paris, and thought this may be a better direction to take. So i prepared the heart by inserting cling film into the ventricles of the heart, so the plaster would get stuck and damage the heart as i tried to take it out. The i prepared the mixture which consisted of adding water to the powder until i go what resembled a yogurty texture. I waited until the mixture was harding then i placed the heart into the mix and left to dry. This way proved to be much or successful.

Making the heart

To make the heart look as realistic as possible i wanted to take a mold from a real heart. The closes thing to a human heart is a pigs one. So i bought a pigs heart from the butchers and bought a molding kit from an art shop. I needed the heart to be soft and pliable to be able to beat when the electronic side of things were worked out. But i needed it to be stiff enough to retain the shape and not just flop around everywhere. I read the instructions for the molding kit, and it told me to mix the paste to resemble a porridge texture. I did this but it was very lumpy and as i tried to beat the lumps out the paste was beginning to set. So i quickly took the pigs heart from the freezer where i had been keeping it to keep it hard, I placed it in a container and tried to pore the mixture over but it was setting so quickly that it had leff gaps and didn’t fill all the way around the heart. When the mixture had fully set i looked at the impression it had made in the mold and it wasn’t good enough to take my cast from, so i had to choose a different approach.