Simple molding

Simple molding
During the course of a project the need to create large amounts of the same piece may arise. The typical solution for this is to cast those items.
One good example are tank tracks.

I usually create about 4 pieces of the tracks to be cast.

To prepare the mold, I use this set of building bricks.

Of course you can also use Lego - may be way cheaper too.

In addition you have to always make sure you seal everything off.
For this I use ordinary kids clay to seal the basic box shape.

My tried and trusted silicone. It is a real easy to work with 1:1 mix.

Not the cheapest, but IMHO the best when it comes to usability.

Simply mix it 1:1

Give it a minute to release all the air bubbles

And start applying a thin coat on the details,

and then pour everything into the casing.

After about 30 Minutes its cured. Here you can see that a little bit of silicone crawled beneath the track pieces.

So there is a bit of cleanup to do.

But actually it was a lot less than I anticipated.

Next it in line is the resin.

Again, my tried and true 1:1 mix from Rai-Ro.

For just these 4 tracks there is very little resin you need at a time, so there's considerable spare...

After an hour the resin is cured enough that you can release it from the mold.
Some air bubbles, but SWEET :)

Since I will always have some left over resin, I usually try to do some additional small pieces.

For this sample it is a hatch, a vision plate, and a sight.

This time I don't want to use my silicone for the mold, but rather the new InstantMold from Cool Mini Or Not.

Simply heat it up in water

and then press it onto the piece you want to cast.

And a few minutes later you have a mold.

So with the next batch of resin you can also pour these 3 new pieces.

Well, the actual cast has some issues and is not as accurate as it would have been with silicone

But it is a lot faster and cheaper

And for these pieces it is definately good enough.

So for small pieces with limited detail I can really recommend the InstantMold from CMoN.