Help with casting body armor

[FuzeTek]

Ok, so I get the idea of casting body parts, heads helmets ect, but how would you go about creating a mold of the body armors/vests?

Seems like a 2 part mold would completely submerge the front or back unless you stood it up on end, but then how would you be sure the resin made it all the way to the bottom? and how would you get the shoulder straps out since the RTV would lock them in.

[Jedi_Master_Ben]

Nah, you do not need a two part mold to do those. A single envolope mold would do just fine. I put at toothpick on each shoulder strap as my sprew ports and anchor them to the resovuar and then glue that to the base.Then pour silicon rubber into your mold. I make sure that the mold walls are not to thick, about 1/4 inch or less. I put the molds in the preasure pot for 6 hours. The tricky part is in the cutting and removing the original master out of the mold. If done right, you should have a stem in the center and the walls seperated from the center all around. This then will allow you to pull the sides away from the cast and allow you to pull the part away from the center stem.

[FuzeTek]

thank you for the info ^_^ I was trying to stray from the pressure pot method but It seems like its going to have to be that way.
Im going to order some 60d easyflo plastic next week and just cast body parts then untill I can get the cash around for the pot, or attempt the "squish method" ... lamesauce.

Thanx again!

[Jedi_Master_Ben]

To get good quality cast to come out each time, you have to go preasure pot (or vacume chamber, (I have no experince with that method)). Also keep in mind, there are different hardness and softness forms of resin products out there. Some come very close to mimic Hasbro grade injection plastics. Smoothon has the best selection of resin products out there.

with vests and skirts pieces, you might want to hold off doing those pices until you have a preasure pot of your own. Nothing is as fustrating as to pull a part and find massive gaps where there should be plastic because of either air bubbles or the plastic cured sooner than the plastic was able to reach all of the mold.

With body vests and coat skirts, you will want a softer plastic that would mimic rubber. Smoothon has a new product called Task16, works like a charm. It stinks, so you might want to get a resperator and open a window for ventalation, but the results are well worth it. The work time is only 6 min, which seams like a lot of time, but it really is not when you figure mixing color and the two parts then placing the mixture in a suringe to inject into your molds.

[nova]

http://www.hisstank.com/forum/g-i-joe-customs-general-discussion/143136-sculpted-webgear-idea-exchange.html