Looking for someone that can cast resin

[Pascal]

Hi, I'm looking for someone in Europe that can make a silicone mould and cast +/- 10 resin copies. The "master" is a styrene car body in 1/43-1/32 scale (+/- 8 by 4 cm). The kit that the body comes from is long OOP, the company has been out of business for years.

 

All help is welcome. 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[thierry laurent]

Hi Pascal. 

 

I know that PJ used to do that but I do not know if this is still the case. 

 

Hth

 

Thierry 

[Pascal]

I decided to try it myself. Ordered the products, they will arrive next week.

 

I think it will be quite an adventure to make the mold and cast the resin...

Edited June 27, 2019 by Pascal

[blackbetty]

tell us how it works and what you used, i thought about casting myself

[Pascal]

4 hours ago, blackbetty said:

tell us how it works and what you used, i thought about casting myself

 

I'll start a WIP and I'll show my molding and casting disasters... euhhh adventures.

[Pascal]

I started the WIP :

 

Please feel free to comment in my WIP. I'm a total newbie with rubber and resin. All help is welcome.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

 

[Juggernut]

On 6/23/2019 at 7:45 PM, MARU5137 said:

Doesn't Harold do this kind of work ? 

 

Yes but Harold is in the USA; at least he was....

[thierry laurent]

Hi Pascal,

 

Well, doing some home casting is not necessarily easy if you do not have a pressure pot. However, this is a hard fact getting one for some rare castings is overkill...

 

The first thing I would recommend you is to assess which type of rubber you need. This may look weird but without a pressure pot, I realized it is sometimes easier to cast in a latex mold rather than in a silicone one! Professional casters will never use this "poor man" approach but I succeeded in casting copies  of very intricate instrument panel parts from an OOP CE Phantom set that were not perfect but at least usable after some work whereas I never succeeded in getting such a result with silicone molds (too many small air bubbles in the mold).

Indeed, one thing you must keep in mind is the fact that before avoiding air bubbles in your resin castings, you must first avoid them in your rubber molds and to me, this is more complicated for intricate parts. Obviously, this is not a major problem if you just want to create a mold for a drop tank! For simple shapes, silicone is the way to go.

 

Latex has also one other noticeable advantage: it is far, far cheaper and if you add tissue paper between some layers, it can become very strong. Working with latex is nonetheless awfully time-consuming as you need to paint latex very thin layers after layers with a cheap paintbrush on your parts whereas you simply pour once the silicone rubber on them to create the mold. So, creating a mold may ask for two weeks of daily work with 20 minutes per day whereas you can create a silicone mold in less than one hour depending on the fact you need a single or two parts mold. Latex is simply more forgiving as you have more control on where the rubber is going and can more easily remove bubbles in the thin layers you add. Obviously, this is only critical for the first two layers! To paint latex, simply dip the tip of you brush into some dish soap before using it to protect the brush hair and be able to clean it easily after use. Otherwise, you will destroy your brush with a single use!

 

If you use a resin that asks for more or less twenty minutes for the initial curing process, use a toothpick to push the resin and remove the air from the mold holes and crannies of the latex mold. This asks for some practice but can give acceptable parts.

 

However, without correct equipment, whatever is the rubber your use, single-side molds are generally the only ones that will give you acceptable parts. For more complicated parts, it is generally more efficient and cost-effective to sub-contract to someone who has the correct equipment.

 

For your information, I did that for some parts that I sent to Harold. They finally became masters of parts he added in his range. So, this is a win-win situation: you get some copies of your original parts for free whereas the garage industry gets a master for free. However, this is not necessarily obvious as this asks for a minimum knowledge of how casting may be optimized while designing your parts.

 

Finally, even if you will never get the results of someone who has the correct casting equipment, casting yourself simple parts may be a time and money saving approach and this is sometimes the only option as, for copyright reasons, no garage industry should/will accept to cast copies of parts made by someone lese, even if they are OOP.

 

Hth

 

Thierry

[thierry laurent]

As you're located in Belgium, Schleiper.com has all the Vosschemie products you may need (silicone, resin, latex and so on). Obviously, there are other resellers but their online shop is efficient and they have tons of other interesting art supplies.

 

BR

 

T.

[thierry laurent]

I had a look at what you want to cast and think that only a complex multipart silicone mold can be used. Actually, I do not think you can reasonably cast that without a pressure pot, alas! 

[Pascal]

Thx for the replies Thierry. I will use this method :

 

 

 

If that doesn't work (and I'm realistic and give it a 30 % chance of me being succesful in making the mould and casting the bodies). I'll send the master to this fellow modeller in Germany :

 

https://www.mezzo-mix-models.de/

 

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Pascal
Spelling

[thierry laurent]

I am crossing my fingers for you. In any case you should cut the rear wing as this kind of undercut is very difficult to cast. Resin casters typically separate the shapes to get correct casting results and avoid damaging the molds. 

[Pascal]

Been busy this weekend making the mould.

 

First part of the mould :

 

 

Second part :

 

 

And the first test shot :

 

 

I'm quite pleased with the result. There's very few air bubbles and most of the details are present on the test shot.

 

Before I cast a second shot, I'll do some clean up on the mould cause there's a couple of spots were the rubber has formed 2 layers in stead of one.

 

The mould could have been a bit wider, I'll take that into account for a next mould.

 

I took out the first test shot (after 24 hrs) before the resin had fully cured. According to the instructions the resin is fully cured in 7 days (!)

Should be able to cast the second shot on thursday or friday, will take photos of all angles when the resin has fully cured.

 

Sincerely

Pascal

[GrahamF]

You need to feed from one end anything like that not flat and make a sort of trough using packing tape so that you pour twice as much resin so that gravity helps it a bit.

Graham