Author Topic: Continuing adventures in cap craft  (Read 6433 times)

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Offline nubbinator

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Continuing adventures in cap craft
« on: Fri, 06 December 2013, 20:04:53 »
A while ago, I did my first foray into cap craft.  Since then, things have evolved considerably and my model have gotten much better.  This has not been without a ton of trial and error though and a considerable number of failures and the expenses that go with that.  As such, I decided that I'd get a kind of journal up and going in here for anyone who's considering getting into cap craft themselves.  Hopefully my knowledge base helps some people save some money and get started into making some interesting artisan caps.

Right now this post is just a rough almost stream of consciousness post, but I'll work on it some more tomorrow and start getting things better organized and start updating with my different experiments/experiences and words of advice.  If other people who are experimenting with cap craft want to chime in with their experiences, please do so.

If you have some different dyes or pigments you'd like me to try in my resins, let me know and I'll be glad to take some from you and test it out.  Or if you want to donate different resins for me to share my results with, I'll definitely do so as well. 

I plan on hitting on the following topics in my little rambling.  If there's anything you think I should add, let me know.  The topics are as follows:

- Making your master

- Mold materials: What works and what doesn't, best techniques (from my experiments)

- Sprueing and the importance of proper sprue locations

- Experiments in coloring caps

- Resins: What's worked for me, what hasn't, and curing times

Making your master

There are many ways to make a master for making a cap, but whichever way you go, don't expect the cap to necessarily be reusable.

My preferred method of making a master is with Sculpey. 



Sculpey is a pretty easy to work with material that's incredibly cheap.  One sub $1 pack of Sculpey should last you for several caps.  When I craft caps with it, I generally knead it to get it nice and flexible, mold it onto the cap, then shape it on the cap.  From there it's easy to add more or cut some off.  Once you have everything prepped, you can either make a mold from the soft Sculpey or dry out the Sculpey. 

I prefer to dry mine a little before making a mold.  Drying it makes it much easier to remove the master from the mold without destroying it or damaging the mold when you remove any flecks of it that may end up stuck in the mold.  You have to be very careful when you dry it though.  Sculpey's cure temp is higher than the melt point for ABS plastic, so you can't just stick it in the oven or toaster and let it cure since it will ruin the cap.  My preferred way of solving this issue is by using a paint stripper/heat gun and waving it back and forth across the Sculpey to ensure the ABS doesn't get too hot.  After a couple minutes, you're good to go.  A hairdryer may work as well, but I haven't tried one.

Other people do different methods.  I believe Bro Caps used modelling clay for his master (and ingeniously used ball bearings or BBs for the eyes) and I'm not sure what Binge uses.  I think I remember him saying he sealed his with acrylic before making a model of them though.  For my original try at cap craft, I actually used wax and did subtractive modelling instead of additive like clay and Sculpey generally are.

Mold Materials

The materials that you make your mold out of is important to the final cast.  If your mold is too soft, it may not last through many casts.  If it's too hard, your caps can be difficult to remove and may damage the finer details of the mold when being removed.

So far, the two mold materials I've played around with are the more readily available Alumilite High Strength 3 (a pink silicone) and Alumilite Quick-Set.  Out of those two, I would not recommend the High Strength since it's too soft of a mold that easily breaks.  The Quick-Set is better, but can be almost too hard at times.

In the future I plan on trying Smooth-On Oomoo since it's supposed to be one of the best silicone mold materials to use.

When making your mold, ideally you want to degas the silicone.  Degassing removes air bubbles from the silicone and ensures that you have a nice, clean mold.  In addition to creating defects in the mold that show up in a casting, air bubbles can also give something for the resin to grab onto when curing and pull out portions of your mold when you pull it out.

When I make a mold of a cap, there are four things I like to do.  First, I like to put a piece of tape on the bottom of the cap and cut it to size like this:



What this does is ensure that your silicone doesn't seep into the bottom of the cap when you're casting the top.  It also makes it much easier to clean up the bottom side of the mold before you pour the top.  In this case, the bottom side of the mold generally holds the master for the top side of the cap since I find it's generally best to pour them inverted.

Secondly, spray the piece you're molding with mold release.  While not entirely necessary, it makes removing the cap from the mold without damaging it easier.

Third, create some homing nubs in the mold so the two halves line up properly when casting.  You can do this by placing several dome shaped somethings in the bottom of your container that you're pouring your mold in or by cutting them into the bottom half of the mold after it's done curing.  Either works fine.

Fourthly, I smear the bottom half of the mold liberally with vaseline before pouring the top half.  This helps ensure that the two halves of the silicone don't bond to each other. In my experience, mold release alone wasn't enough to do this.

Sprueing

This is by far the most important thing to consider when you're making your mold.  Without proper sprue locations, you can end up with ruined caps every time.  When creating sprue holes, you're creating places for resin overflow to go to and where trapped air can escape.

When choosing your sprue locations, look and see if any part of your mold going to be higher than the sprue hole.  If it is, then you either need a sprue hole to that location, or to rethink where your sprues will be located. 

In general, your sprues will fall into two categories, sprues included when you cast your mold and sprues cut into your mold. 

I'll discuss more about this later, the impact sprues have on your molds, and how sprues can affect the life of your mold if not properly chosen.

Resins

I'll update more on this later, but I will say this now, for most resins, a pressure pot is your friend.  Unfortunately, I don't have one yet since I haven't seen one for under $400-500, but I plan on getting one in the future and showing the difference it makes.
« Last Edit: Wed, 25 December 2013, 14:08:40 by nubbinator »

Offline nubbinator

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #1 on: Fri, 06 December 2013, 20:05:11 »
Experiments in coloring caps

So far, most my experiments in cap coloring have mainly been with the same kind of Alumilite resin, the Amazing Casting Resin, which is a quick setting resin that dries white.  I've played around with a clear resin and a polyester resin, but both have long cure periods, so I can't experiment with them as quickly.  I'll still get info out on them, but it will be much slower.

For now, I'll just share my results for the Amazing Casting Resin:

Recommended Dyes/Pigments/Colorants:

 - Alumilite Resin Dyes: These are incredibly concentrated, but they do a great job coloring the caps.  The final color is hard to control though since they're so concentrated.  If you want to make multiple caps of the same color, just mix a large portion of the A side resin with it until you get a color you like (be sure to test small parts along the way), then set it aside.

 - Alcohol dyes:  These work fantastic and actually seem to make the resin harden up faster and cure harder as long as you don't overdo it.  I find 4 drops is generally pushing it and anything more is too much.  Iv'e played around with these and they've worked great.  The colors generally end up more pastel, but that can be nice.





While the solid colors work great, metallic colors don't work well with the dye.  This is the result of silver and gold alcohol dyes:



- Modelling enamel/lacquer:  I wasn't expecting this to work, but it works pretty well.  Again, the colors come out quite a bit lighter than the original, but they worked nice.





- Sculpt Nouveau Solvent Dye:  These work really well.  Just be very careful how much you add.  A full drop can be too much for a small piece and cause it not to harden.





Works, but not recommended:

- Powdered wood dye (Woodlock, Keda, etc.): This will color your resin, but it won't dissolve properly, causing it to get streaks and darker color dots in the resin.

- Powdered Rit dye:  Same deal as wood dyes.  It doesn't mix well into the resin.  It will color it, but not color it well.

Rit is the left, wood dye is on the right.  Of course, this is a look you could be wanting.



Colorants to avoid:

- Anything with water in the recipe.  Water reacts with Alumilite and cause it to foam and bubble.

- Acrylics paints: They create a foamy, bubbly mess since they're water based.



- Higgins Dye Based Ink: Does the same thing as acrylic and creates a foamy, bubbly mess.  The dye must be suspended in water.



- Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow and Lumiere: Both of these create a bubbly foamy mess.  Another pigment that likely relies on water.



This is the kind of result you can expect from Jacquard or acrylic:



- Jacquard Perl Ex: No disaster, but just doesn't seem to dissolve or dilute into the resin well resulting in a disappointing finish.  You can paint your mold with it and it gives some different results.

- Pigments - they just don't stay in suspension well in the resin.  Other resins may do better with them.  I know that polyester resins should take pigments better than the resins I'm using.

- Embossing powder - same deal as pigments



The bottom piece was done with pigment being mixed in, the top two were me seeing if perhaps embossing powder could work as a dye.



Still to try:
 
  - Tempura

  - Oil paint

  - Gesso

In addition to adding the pigment directly to the resin, you can also brush the inside of your mold.  This can work well, but it's also a good way to get brush strokes in your final piece.

The left piece had the mold brushed with pearlescent powder, the middle piece with Jacquard powder, and the right had both brushed in.

« Last Edit: Wed, 25 December 2013, 14:21:10 by nubbinator »

Offline nubbinator

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #2 on: Fri, 06 December 2013, 20:05:25 »
Reserved.

Offline RESPRiT

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #3 on: Sat, 01 February 2014, 05:03:55 »
No replies yet? This is an amazing resource, thanks so much for putting this together Nub!

How many molds could you get out of the Quick Set Kit? (this one on Amazon)
« Last Edit: Sat, 01 February 2014, 05:13:26 by RESPRiT »
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Offline SpAmRaY

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #4 on: Sat, 01 February 2014, 08:14:22 »
I missed this thread....very nice information nubs! Thanks for sharing.

Offline nubbinator

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #5 on: Sat, 01 February 2014, 10:42:43 »
No replies yet? This is an amazing resource, thanks so much for putting this together Nub!

How many molds could you get out of the Quick Set Kit? (this one on Amazon)

In my experience, 2-4.  It really depends on the size of the master and how big of a mold you make.

And at that price, you should probably just pick up some Smooth-On Oomoo.

I missed this thread....very nice information nubs! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks.  I do try and proved some helpful information for anyone who is interested in starting cap crafting themself and trying to make some.  It's not cheap to get into, but I have a lot of fun doing it.

Offline Badwrench

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #6 on: Sat, 01 February 2014, 10:57:40 »
Awesome write up.  So cool that you are trying so many different color sources that would not be readily thought of.  The Testors paint is a great idea. 

Also, the bubbled up pink test with the water based dye reminds me of your first zinc cap in a good way  :thumb:  That would actually be a very cool Function or Esc key - especially with some backlight. 
wut. i'd buy a ****ty IBM board for that green V2

Offline dustinhxc

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #7 on: Sat, 01 February 2014, 11:43:20 »
Hey awesome to see how you make your colors man! I love the newer colors that you've been coming out with. Of course I love my caps you made for me too. <3


Offline bcredbottle

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Re: Continuing adventures in cap craft
« Reply #8 on: Fri, 25 September 2015, 10:06:33 »
What's the brand of embossing powder you used in these pics:
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