Pouring with Mold Max

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Gilrock

Gilrock

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Joined
Oct 18, 2011
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560
Location
Tucson, AZ
So I received my Mold Max 30 goop yesterday and poured my first mold. I learned a few thing to do different next time. I had several things going wrong and like any good perfectionist I had to find someone else to blame for my mistakes....lol. The Part A stuff is super thick. I had my son hold a plastic cup so it wouldn't fall over when pouring the part A stuff. Well it's so thick it doesn't pour out the bucket in a small stream...it wants to stay together. I had the cup filled halfway when I realize half of it is spilling over the edge of the cup on the side across from me...so I had to yell at my son for not notifying me half of it wasn't even making it into the cup. So I scramble to find some thin pieces of cardboard and scrape it up off the piece of countertop I was using. Then when pouring the Part B stuff which looks like thinned out blood I'm cursing the fact that no one ever puts anything into a spill proof container. There's a couple dishwasher detergent folks that at least got that one figured out. Even holding a cup right under the lip of the container it still wants to dribble out down the side. It was almost better to just pour it into a cup real fast and then pour it back into the container to achieve the proper weight ratio. Then I realized this stuff is way too thick to mix in a tall 20 oz cup using a popsicle stick that barely reaches the bottom. So I yell for the wife to get a low profile container that can be thrown away. She comes back with this lunch container that has a divider. So what happens is as I try to mix it up the thin red Part B stuff is just spilling over the divider and there's gonna be no way to get a nice uniform mix. So I yell again...seriously dear I need a container without a divider. She pulls out an aluminum pie pan so that ended up working fairly good although every time I transferred containers I was loosing material stuck in the previous container. All in all in the end it seemed to pour really nice and it was looking good this morning...just felt soft and tacky still so I left it alone before leaving for work.

Second lesson learned....never do anything when the mother-in-law is in the house...comments from the peanut gallery make it hard to maintain a pleasant attitude. :)
 
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A couple of hard learned tips. Use an over sized tub like a 2 liter plastic paint tub found at Home Depot. When taking material out of the thick "A" I use a wood paint stirrer like a putty knife stick it in like a knife in peanut butter and let it drip into the container. Have your container on the scale you can slowly let the material run off the stick and accurately control the weight. Then the thin part "B" can be put into a small plastic cup and pored directly into the tub with the "A" already in do the math to get the correct weight. Then mix and mix and mix some more. Then it's into the pressure pot to go under vacuum for about 3 minutes gets rid of most trapped air. That's why you need an oversize container when under vacuum the trapped air will expand and rise the volume of material in your container will just about double.

Just some hard learned lessons.
Have fun
 
Yeah I read the instructions and it recommended using vacuum but I didn't have any way to do that. So I just gave it a try without that. I applied manual vibration and saw air bubbles rise and pop at the top. Hopefully I can pop it out tonight and see what happened.
 
Well the Mold Max mold came out pretty awesome. Doesn't look like there was any need for vacuum because there are no visible air bubbles. I only see wrinkles from the saran wrap. I put the Silicone version in the photo as well...it doesn't look anywhere near as nice.

This is only half the idea...these are basically just 3/4" slots with a 3/4" rounded bottom but some extra room on the top and sides. The second part of this will be machined parts from Delrin that will suspend the tube in the mold. I could make them on the wood lathe but since my metal lathe is arriving next week I'll wait till then so the parts are more precise.
 

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Those look good. I am about to order some too.

I have been reading and watching videos. It seems the amount of air bubbles, like in casting, is directly proportional to how heavy handed the stirring is. Is it possible to mix this with kid gloves or do you really have to put some effort into it?
 
It's fairly thick stuff but not too hard to stir. I used one of those rubber spatula's like for stirring cake mix. I noticed as I would roll some of the goop over while stirring it was creating air pockets so then I tried to be more careful. I did see small bubbles rising but they would pop without me touching them and so then I shook the mold sideways for about five minutes to help move any other air. I noticed the first 10-15 minutes I still saw new air bubbles rise and dissipate. It seemed like the air does push it's way up through the goop but it's just really slow. So as long as you're mold doesn't have a type of shape that could trap air it's probably ok.
 
From reading your first post, I expected a disaster! Actually it turned out great. After a few uses, please let us know how its working. I realize your new mold looks nicer than the silicone ones do, but is there any difference in performance?

I have made some silicone molds. That's a great idea about rounding out the bottom of the mold. I will have to give that a try on my next mold.
 
Well the big difference between using Silicone and Mold Max has more to do with making the mold. The Mold Max cured in 24 hours because it's a two part mix. Maybe if you try some of the suggestions from others to mix the silicone with water and soap first you could speed it up. For my silicone mold I removed the sides of the mold after 2 days to try to get more air to it. Then after 5 days I pulled out the center pieces and it was still mushy in there...I had to try to smooth it out with my finger. That's why my silicone mold looks messy inside. I'm sure it would still work functionally I would just get rougher edges on the blanks. I'm not going to cast with the mold until I make the parts I want to hold the tubes.
 
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