How to make a silicone rubber mold

[Dana_Gifford]

Howdy-

I just added a new photo album to our Facebook page on how to make a
silicone rubber mold.

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It features a custom mold frame we had made for us by the local
technical high school machine shop. The frame is adjustable and
allows us to make molds 1 inch high x 3 1/2 inches deep and; 1, 1
3/4, 3 3/4, 4 3/4, or up to 6 1/2 inches wide. The main frame was
machined from a solid billet of aluminum. It is as large a frame as
will fit in our vulcanizer. They charged us less than $20.00 to make
it. The matching plates were cut from an aluminum sign I wire brushed
the vinyl sign material off of. If you have a technical high school
in your area I cannot stress enough how great a resource they are. In
Connecticut where I currently live (this winter has made, no, forced
me to find a place in a much warmer state, like NO snow warmer, any
suggestions?) we have a regional technical high school system that
will perform work for residents. In addition to the mold frame I
have had the HVAC department build me a custom exhaust hood that
anywhere else would have cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars,
ours cost less than $100, labor and material included. I hope some of
you will find this album informative and don’t forget to check out
your tech schools.

Be well,
Duke
houseofbubba.com

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[John4]

Duke,

Nice set of photos. One suggestion when titling it, I would be
helpful to know that it shoeing process for HEAT VULCANIZED rubber
molds. The adjustable mold frame is a great idea too. Using Tech
Schools as a “materials working” resource is good too.

We haven’t used the vulcanizer in YEARS, instead using room
temperature vulcanizing mold materials. The heat vulcanized rubbers
tend to be tougher materials and less prone to damage if used a lot
but one or a few use RTV molds are good for us. Also the heat
vulcanized mold material tend to have a longer mold/shelf life than
RTV’s unless one uses platinum cured silicons. These are expensive
and do not get along well with some master materials and the are
easily “contaminated” by using equipment that has been used with
other materials.

Again, the “tutorial” was great. Where was the finished ring molde

I do work in larger pieces, bronze sculpture mostly thus the use of
RTV mold materials, but Cynthia (wife) was a jeweler for YEARS and
we have all her jewelry equipment and we do get into jewelry "items"
on occasion.

John Dach
MLCE.net

[Dana_Gifford]

John-

Thanks for the kind words and constructive suggestions. I too use
RTV for a lot of my molds. I show my procedures for RTV on our
website

http://www.ganoksin.com/gnkurl/ep81sx

I have been using photopolymers to create my some of my models and
the button we created for Lily is a good example of the polymer
technique and RTV molding procedure we use.

I am not familiar with the, “platinum cured silicons” you refer to.

Ahhh, “where is the finished ring mold?” The buckle tutorial (I have
been trying to figure out what to call these things I keep writing, I
call them articles, but I really like tutorial) was something I had
put together a little while ago, but the ring mold was something I
was working on this week. I threw in the ring pictures to show the
height capacity of the big mold frame. I was also trying to make the
ring mold self-separating, which I accomplished, BUT I didn’t get the
parting line where I wanted it, so I didn’t show the results.

The attached picture is a set of home made RTV mold frames under our
bell jar, they don’t make the size I needed so I made it myself and
made it as large as our equipment can handle.

Be well,
Duke

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