Has anyone used any casting resin?
any advice for a first timer? im doing a very large scratch building project and I need a lot of window frames that have to be custom made since I havnt found anything close from the parts suppliers.
Here’s a good place to start:
http://www.alumilite.com/howto.cfm
It has various “How To’s” to get you going.
Also, the casting group on Yahoo is very helpful and active.
Mike Tennent
Window FRAMES are not hard. You’ll be able to cast decent window frames after very little practice.
If, however, you’re thinking of casting an entire window, with sashes and mullions in place, you’ll have a hard time ahead. The problem is that the technology involved, rubber molds, casting resins, etc, depends on gravity and resin flow to fill all spaces in the mold, at least when done by us modelers.
The spaces in the mold for the mullions on your window are only a few thousandths of an inch wide. The resins involved, although they flow well, have a definite resistance to flowing into very small cavities. What you can expect is that you’ll get a significant number of failed castings, where the resin didn’t flow fully into the window mullions. You have to choose the resin carefully, there are some that are thinner than usual, with a resulting better flow charactertictic. Also, dust the mold with talc. But it’s still going to be tricky.
You’d probably stand the best chance of success with either pressure casting or vacuum degassing your materials, or both. But this is a little more complicated than what is usually described in most “how to” articles in the model press.
-Ed
Thanks for the info. by the way what should I use as a release agent?