In an attempt to find a new means of visor creation, I stumbled upon a thread on this site, somone asking about if they can use plastic resin for the covering the pepakura helmets. I wouldn't say it was a viable option for that, but seeing as how it's clear I thought perhaps it could work for a casted visor. Below is my first experience with the stuff. I used Castin' Craft Resin, which received horrible reviews... wonderful. I was actually trying to find the other option, Castin' Craft Clear Casting Resin with Catalyst but my local Michael's (Craft Store) didn't have it. The thing that also drove me to give this a shot was the ability to dye (Castin' Craft Dye) the resin before casting.
Seeing as how I had never worked with this resin before, I figured I would give it a test before going all out and trying to cast my visor with this stuff. Fair warning if you do buy it, it's just as toxic as the fiberglass resin, so be sure to wear your face masks & breathers. I added a small amount to a plastic cup, mixed in some dye, and then the catalyst. Below you can see that it was about 1/2 inch thick, and you could see through it without too much distortion, obviously the visor only needs to be about 1/8 inch, so I don't think there would be any distortion. The sample test had promising results. What I didn't take into account is how this stuff doesn't like to stick to the sides/walls of things, like Smooth-Cast does. It also doesn't cure as quick.
It took about an hour for the small, hockey puck-like cast to cure solid (obviously 24 hours or so would be better). So I moved on to the bigger and "better". I mixed up another batch, this time I put a lot more plastic resin in, dyed it to my liking, and then added quite a bit of catalyst (package says to add about 15 drops per ounce). In retrospect, I think I should have added a lot more, I had about 6 ounces of resin... crap. So, I got my helmet mold ready and dumped it in. I used the same swirling technique that I would with Smooth-Cast, but I knew that the resin wouldn't stick to the sides very well, so I tried my best to continue swirling until the resin turned into a slow moving sludge. It probably would have gone better had I added more (the correct amount?) of catalyst.
So this morning I went to check out my creation (abomination) and found that eventhough I though I had waited long enough for the resin to be sludge and wouldn't just fall down the sides of the mold, it had. bummer. But, as you can see in the pictures, it did create a nice solid mold of the tip of the helmet. It did have stringy sticky film connected to it.
Final Report
Had I added more catalyst and focused on keeping the resin from pooling at the bottom of the helmet, I think you would all be looking at a nice plastic casted visor. I know that vacuum formers are cheap to build, and I will end up doing that I'm sure this resin option was a nice test and if I get the urge, I'm going to attempt it again with my refined process. The other downfall is now cleaning the sticky uncured resin from my mold!
Seeing as how I had never worked with this resin before, I figured I would give it a test before going all out and trying to cast my visor with this stuff. Fair warning if you do buy it, it's just as toxic as the fiberglass resin, so be sure to wear your face masks & breathers. I added a small amount to a plastic cup, mixed in some dye, and then the catalyst. Below you can see that it was about 1/2 inch thick, and you could see through it without too much distortion, obviously the visor only needs to be about 1/8 inch, so I don't think there would be any distortion. The sample test had promising results. What I didn't take into account is how this stuff doesn't like to stick to the sides/walls of things, like Smooth-Cast does. It also doesn't cure as quick.
It took about an hour for the small, hockey puck-like cast to cure solid (obviously 24 hours or so would be better). So I moved on to the bigger and "better". I mixed up another batch, this time I put a lot more plastic resin in, dyed it to my liking, and then added quite a bit of catalyst (package says to add about 15 drops per ounce). In retrospect, I think I should have added a lot more, I had about 6 ounces of resin... crap. So, I got my helmet mold ready and dumped it in. I used the same swirling technique that I would with Smooth-Cast, but I knew that the resin wouldn't stick to the sides very well, so I tried my best to continue swirling until the resin turned into a slow moving sludge. It probably would have gone better had I added more (the correct amount?) of catalyst.
So this morning I went to check out my creation (abomination) and found that eventhough I though I had waited long enough for the resin to be sludge and wouldn't just fall down the sides of the mold, it had. bummer. But, as you can see in the pictures, it did create a nice solid mold of the tip of the helmet. It did have stringy sticky film connected to it.
Final Report
Had I added more catalyst and focused on keeping the resin from pooling at the bottom of the helmet, I think you would all be looking at a nice plastic casted visor. I know that vacuum formers are cheap to build, and I will end up doing that I'm sure this resin option was a nice test and if I get the urge, I'm going to attempt it again with my refined process. The other downfall is now cleaning the sticky uncured resin from my mold!