Need advice on mold construciton

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JadedMonk
Posts: 128
Joined: Sun Jul 06, 2003 5:48 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas

Need advice on mold construciton

Post by JadedMonk »

With the population of GK'ers here, I thought it wise to consult with people who might have been in a similar bind.

I need the pieces pictured here for a kit and have been casting sets for each kit. It seemed more practical to cast them in order to guaranty the dimensions, with a bonus of not driving myself berserk cutting several hundred by hand with a dodgy mitre box.

Supposing any one of you were going to cast these pieces in order to yield consistent results, how would you make the mold? I don't have the means to do pressure/vacuum casting right now, but am not exactly inept when it comes to mold building.

I've been using an open face mold cast with one end of each segment fixed to a sheet of styrene. The segments generally come out fine, but with enough flash on one end that it takes a bit of time to sand each segment down. If I am successful in avoiding much flash, I usually lose one or two of the segments.

I had thought about threading them all onto a brass pipe casting the mold, then replacing the brass pipe, but there my bewilderment is how to vent each of the 24 segments.

Materials:
MoldMax 30
Smooth Cast 321
Masters are 1/4" inner diameter syrene tubes.

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
JM
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