16 June 2016INTROYo, wassup guys. Let me start with a short lil intro. I've been here since August of last year, and what really got me into the community were the artisan caps on here. I took a sculpting class my freshman year of college ~ 3 years ago, so I have
some experience with mold making and sculpting.
Originally, I bought sculpting stuff to make some keycap(s), but was swamped with school last semester. It's summer now, and I'm just chillin at home playing OW, so I decided to buy mold and resin material. I know there are a ton of other guides out there, with definite better quality and more experience; hopefully my noob experiments are something others can follow for their own first time
If anything, this will be a log of my steps to make resin-casted sculpts. I'll be glad to answer any questions as best as I can using my experience, so feel free to ask!
LEGGO!
WHAT IS DA BOY MAKING?Since I'm not doing sculpting anymore on the caps, trying to skip a step for my initial trials, I used 2 plain PBT Cherry-profile caps. I wanted to take a leap and go for an actual project for this, so I plan on making a QWER/DF set since I feed on League all day every day. So 2 keys, one r2 and another r3.
MAKING THE 2-PART MOLD
The rubber material used to make the mold can be seen above on the left ^. To begin, I started with these cardboard cylindrical boxes bought at Hobby Lobby. These are the moldboxes.
I put a flat layer of plasticine on the bottom of the moldboxes so the keycaps are firm on the bottom - apply some pressure. After that, just mix your 2-part rubber material following the instructions provided. Before pouring, I let the mixture sit for 4 minutes so gas could rise. I filled to about an inch above the cap.
After drying, I had to cut open the cardboard boxes to loosen it up. I cut it all the way down on opposing sides, and pryed the cardboard until I could pull the rubber with my fingers. After pulling the cap out, I cut away any excess rubber to clean the edges.
I put plasticine in the underside of the cap to make the final sculpt more full - I don't really like the lines under keycaps anyway.
I cleaned away any lil bits of plasticine that may have stuck onto the rubber, and placed the sticks of Q-tips onto the corners as seen to act as sprues for the mold. I used a dab of hot glue, not a
fat glob.
I then put the rubber molds back into the cardboard cylinders, and sealed the cut sides with masking tape. I mixed more rubber, and poured as before ~
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After pulling it out of the box, I pulled out the sprues.
What it looks like when cut in half: (I forgot to put some type of separating chemical, so I had to manually cut the rubber all the way around). Hopefully there are no problems from this when making the casts. There seems to be a tight seal, though.
All together:
So the molds came out pretty well, no visible bubbles or defects. Hopefully the cutting didn't mess anything up. I'll update with resin casting pictures soon! I woke up today, mixing some colors and pouring, so I'll see how it looks later tonight.
Thanks for stopping by and checking this out
