Hello everyone. I've been looking into molding and casting my own parts for awhile now but I'm not for sure what materials I should use. I was really interested in other peoples experiences with materials that work best for them. I'm eventually wanting to mold and cast whole figures. So any advice or comments would be great.
I love the method of this guy,but I don't know what kind of monster-hotgluegun that is or how hard this material is^^ I want to start casting stuff too soon and think this video is very interesting...maybe easier than mixing resin every time and bubbletrouble?
High temp glue sticks are just like really hard rubber. I'm sure the material is durable enough for figures, but who knows how well they'll accept paint or apoxie sculpt.
If you look closely at the casts, you can see they have imperfections that are just as bad as bubbles. Not only that, but you have to cut all the sprues and recreate any detail they ruined.
I think it's waaaay cheaper to do this than using the usual casting materials though, because damn, every little thing is expensive in this hobby.
From the little experimenting I did, you'll be okay with most materials you use, the problem is the bubbles that form. You'll need some kind of pressure pot or vacuum to get rid of them. You can minimize them with good mixing/pouring techniques and clever mold making, but I've never seen flawless casts doing that without the pot unless they were really simple pieces, like push molds.
You might like Flex 50 or 60 (made by Alumilite) for heads, so they can pop onto pegs like official figure heads. Flex 30 was excellent for very flexible skirt pieces, but the working time is like 5 minutes. You'll need to extend that working time with additives if you want to use a pressure pot.
This is good advice. I tried this myself and the biggest issue that came up was painting the pieces. The Flex series is about the same price across the board for flexible Urethane, but it just was a pain to see the paint rub right off. It looks like the skirt pieces is the best bet for this stuff as long as you pigment it or color it first.
I really don't have specific figures in mind but I think at this point I have a large enough library of fig parts that I could start molding and casting them and that in the long run it would be cheaper then buying fodder or cast from someone else.
You can never go wrong with Smooth-On products. It seems to be the trade secret that people are hiding. Bought a custom head from a decent artist on Ebay, and The quality of the part was amazing, and I was able to figure out what the artist used even though he ignored my messages asking for a bit of assistance. Wasn't too hard, just a bunch of trial and error.
Look up the work of Monsterhjerne- he can lead you in the right direction. But if you google molding & casting figures, you will get a plethora of help. Good luck!
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I love the method of this guy,but I don't know what kind of monster-hotgluegun that is or how hard this material is^^ I want to start casting stuff too soon and think this video is very interesting...maybe easier than mixing resin every time and bubbletrouble?
If you look closely at the casts, you can see they have imperfections that are just as bad as bubbles. Not only that, but you have to cut all the sprues and recreate any detail they ruined.
I think it's waaaay cheaper to do this than using the usual casting materials though, because damn, every little thing is expensive in this hobby.
You might like Flex 50 or 60 (made by Alumilite) for heads, so they can pop onto pegs like official figure heads. Flex 30 was excellent for very flexible skirt pieces, but the working time is like 5 minutes. You'll need to extend that working time with additives if you want to use a pressure pot.
I could start molding and casting them and that in the long run it would be cheaper then buying fodder or cast from someone else.