Professionals working in organizations serving blind people routinely make topographic maps, images of animals, and other quasi-three-dimensional pictures for their clients. Most are made by thermoforming a plastic sheet over a hand-made mold. The mold can be anything that is porous and can withstand the temperature of the thermoforming process. Many molds are made by cutting and pasting paper, cardboard, string, metal foil, etc onto a heavy paper base. Heavy acrylic paint (eg Liquitex brand) can be squirted through a syringe to make into intricate patterns of raised lines. The paint dries in about an hour.
Some of the things used to make the molds are common materials in the home. Most are common supplies available in arts and crafts shops. The syringe used by many professionals is a ``onojector'' available from drugstores, pet stores, or veterinarians.
Braille wording can be added to these tactile pictures using a braille slate and stylus--available from almost all firms and organizations selling general supplies for blind people.
Another technique for making molds is by deforming soft aluminum sheets with various tools. The American Printing House for the Blind has a kit that includes a number of these aluminum sheets and a selection of useful tools and dies for making images on the sheets. The kit includes a punch and die set for putting braille wording on the mold.
The American Printing House also sells a Starter Graphics kit intended primarily for non-professional production of single copy tactile graphic pictures. This starter kit includes fabric puff paint and a squeeze bottle applicator, a number of different fabrics with different textures, several sheets of glue-on tactile labels, a braille slate and stylus, and a guide to braille. One can also use the starter kit to make molds from which thermoform copies can be made, but users caution that the puff paint mold should be powdered with talcum to prevent the puff paint from sticking to the plastic thermoform sheets if used for this purpose.
Many volunteer and professional transcribers working for public and private organizations providing materials for the blind use these methods routinely to make excellent quality maps, relief drawings, etc. Prof. Judith Tamburlin and Prof. Charles Severin of the State University of New York at Buffalo[1] have established a research program to develop high-relief educational materials used in the life sciences. Their largest project to date is a three volume atlas of human anatomy with over 100 illustrations. It is used in the university and by high school students. They distributed three copies of the atlas to each state resource center or agency designated for the dissemination of educational materials to visually impaired students and their teachers.
At the present time, virtually every variable height tactile picture or the mold from which it is made is constructed by human hands. High-tech production methods are topics of research, but none are presently being employed for any large scale production. There are at least three research projects underway in the US employing computer-controlled milling machines to make molds[2, 3, 4] and one using a new stereolithographic instrument[4] for making molds. These research projects show promise for simplifying the process and reducing the human labor required to make variable-height tactile pictures, but the cost of the machines is large enough that they are unlikely to replace the human cut-and-paste process any time in the very near future.
Thermoforming requires a Thermoform Duplicator--a heated press that takes the mold and a piece of Braillon sheet. When the press is closed a partial vacuum pulls the heated Braillon sheet around the mold making a faithful copy of the original. Several standard sizes can be made using supplies and equipment available from American thermoform. Several different weight Braillon is available. The lighter weight is satisfactory for regular size braille pages, but heavier weights are generally recommended for large sizes.