Casting Grt Tanks part 2!

Here we go with the second half of the experiment, I also tried to use Easy Mold Silicone Putty to create several molds. This stuff is quite different!

It comes in two containers and instead of mixing the components you just cut it out (1 to 1) ration and mead them together with your fingers, then press the putty around the object you want to cast (in this case the grot turret above) it only takes about 30 minutes to harden, it is not nearly as flexable as the previous (blue) stuff from part 1 but you can still get a bit of detail out of it.


Here are what the molds look like using the silicone puddy (puple), they work ok for simple things, but the turret would be the most complex I would try, also if you compleatly engulf the object in the puddy it is too thick to work out any air holes, I learned this the hard way, and with it being so much stiffer, its hard to get the original object out, this work best for doors and plates and simple 3d objects, but works!



Here is what the molds look like for the turret (in the center) above.

The image above is the very first casting that I did, I really screwed it up, When you mix the casting urethanes together, you have to be very very exact on the ratio ( 1 to 1) (I did it by eye and that was not good enough!). If you do it wrong the cast will not solidify properly (even when baked), and will make a mess, one piece(below) looked ok coming out but after leaving it overnight in front of the TV it ejacuated during the night! ewww.

No kidding it spoooged on its own!

So, I measure the amounts exactly, then mixed for 30 seconds, it also gets very warm, then poured it quickly, you have about a minute before it turns white and starts to solidify and it can start to do this as you pour, so go fast. I also had to open up the molds a bit to make sure the urethane poured into all the small holes and parts!

Once I mixed and poured correctly, I have not had a problem with the castings, above is one big set of tracks, bodies and turrets,

Above is using a large file to get rid of some of the extra plastic and to make the back side smoother and easier to mate the parts, works fast,

making lots of tank bits!

Here are some up close pics to show some detail, some of the pointy parts are not making through the system, but I can add my own parts, and some casting made some holes here and there that are easy to fix, these are grot tanks so the more damaged they are the better they looked, which is why I am testing theses first!

My little helper!

casting grt tanks part one!

This is a fun test to see if I can cast FW grt tanks, I have purchased two sets of tanks which is about 8 tanks and they are pretty expensive, I want to create about 16 more tanks for an armageddon formation that would be fun to create, but that is super expensive and I want to create more variations, so I will be casting bits a peices to create the rest of the tanks, I think I have bleed enough to FW, so this will try to see what works and what the cost difference is!

First to creat the molds, For this I am using Silicone RTV (partA and partB) and picked these up from Kit Kraft in Studio city, a bit pricy (24.99 + 10.00)? for creating the molds, here is a picture of the bottles:


This first test for this is to create a mould for a set of tank tracks converted over from an ork trakked buggy thing, these are plastic and look easy to create, also creating a mold for the lower part of a fw resin grt tank body. I used some old legos to create the structure for the mold, and connected a screw to the piece so it could be lowered into the silicone and held suspended in there. To mix the parts A (silicone) and parts B (activator), its a ration of 1 part B to 10 parts A and this is by weight, so I poured them into a mixing pot on a scale to get it right. Mix it to get a consistant blue color and you have about an hour to pour it, here are the pictures of the parts and pouring for the first set of molds!

After waiting 24 hours or so, I was able to pull out the legos (the silicone did not stick to it) and then pull out the plasic and resin parts out the the mould, it was very flexible and seemed to keep a lot of detail, the only real problem I ran into was tiny bublles at the bottom, but not sure how to fix this, and I have filler putty that will make sort work of it, then I created more molds of tank bodies and turrets!

The next step will be to create the cast, using the casting urethane parts A and B, mixed 1 to 1 ratio, here is an image for the casting urethane that I picked up at kit kraft. Tomorrow I will try to do the first casts, the second round of molds are still drying!

Introduction

This blog is to document and photograph the armies and games that I hope to create in both the warhammer fantasy and 40k worlds, plus some misc stuff put in there, also to document some games and scenery builds and ideas. Just a way to create some silly dorkdum diary!