Alumilite Steering Wheel Mold.
I thought that was pretty cool. Little did I know at the time that to do what they did, you could probably go out and buy the same rare steering wheel for what it would cost in materials, but I thought the process was intriguing, so I took a brochure. They also showed the process of making a replica tail light:
Making a tail light.
I didn't have any need for it at the time, but like everything else, I never throw anything away, so when I DID have a need for it I had the company name handy (after digging for it for a couple hours).
The process ends up being more expensive than you might think, mainly because a little bit does NOT go a long way, but if you need parts that just are not available any more it may be your only alternative. You really have to consider the demand for a particular item, because that's the way to recoup your investment, by making enough for other people to sell and make some of your money back. This is not a system where you can just say "I can't find another tail light at a reasonable price, so I'll just reproduce my good one for $30." As I go into further detail, you will see the work that is involved and how much product is needed. The initial investment can escalate quickly, depending on how big of a part you are trying to reproduce, and how well you want it to turn out.
These are two of the products I will be using to make molds:
Alumilite Quick Set and High Strength 3
Enough for HALF a mold!
In general, 1 pound of mold making silicone is enough to make 21 square inches of mold. Let that sink in a bit. A 1 cubic foot mold is 1728 cubic inches (12"x12"x12")! For the Ful-Vu lens, the mold ended up being roughly 6"x6"x12", or 1/4 cubic foot, or 432 cubic inches! Divide that by 21 and you will see you need roughly 20 boxes of product to make the mold, at a retail of $30 a piece! Now, the object you are casting takes up some space, and there are some other tricks you can use so you don't need as much casting material, plus if you buy in bulk or look for discounts you can save some money, but you can see how something that starts out as a whim suddenly becomes a major investment! All told, just to do the Ful-Vu lens (which is pretty big) I estimate I have already spent close to $400 on this project, and that doesn't include the cost to acquire the original part to cast from ($250)! You're going to want to make sure you really want to do this before you get started!
You will also want to get a number of cheap utensils for the various measuring and mixing of silicones and resins you will have to do. I have not had much luck cleaning anything after use, so you really want to find disposable stuff at places like dollar stores. You can also get glass measuring cups at places like Goodwill that you can get a few uses out of before you have to get rid of them.
Dollar Tree mixing stuff
For mixing cups, you want something as smooth as possible on the inside, to make it easier to get your mixed liquid out of the cup. A lot of what you will use is measured precisely by weight or volume (make sure you know which!), so you can really mess things up by not getting everything out of the mixing cups. Things like Solo cups have ridges on the inside, which make it difficult to get everything out of them. A pouring spout or corner also makes things easier, but is not necessary.
No comments:
Post a Comment