Bahahahha. This was my first mold…
30 Likes
Edit: nevermind. That seems to be exactly what you did.
@glyphiks, so the industry standard is to make a fiberglass mould first and then to make more parts using that mould. This way you also get an awesome finish on the outside of the board. The two youtube videos explain it perfectly.
2 Likes
Yep thats what I did, but nice to have more content i here.
Next attempt will include a silicone jacket as the first layer of the mold to try and preserve details in the embellishments
1 Like
So from the video I think I heard them say not to use too much gelcoat otherwise it will fracture easily.
Another thing you could do is to make the walls more inclined. If you look at other fiberglass enclosures around here, they seem to be doing that.
BTW, how many layers of mould release did you use? Like spraying drying spraying drying…
Also did you wax the surface?
To make the part I only used one layer of the aerosol mold release. No wax.
Also next time round I wont be using gelcoat, rather use epoxy with fused silica and milled fibre for compatibility
1 Like
All the videos that I have seen, stress how many coats they do. Like 4-5. Some also use wax layer underneath. That might explain what happened to you.
1 Like
Sweet thread man! Great documentation.
6 Likes
If you move onto silicone mold making touch base.
1 Like
I was watching some videos on this last night. So much work
1 Like
It is an incredible amount of work. But i do really like the idea of what @rosco is about to try, using a vac formed thermoplastic as a mold.
2 Likes
It does look like a lot of work. You are lucky there is an enclosure maker on your mud island.
6 Likes
Ive managed to secure enclosures 4 lyfe
5 Likes
2 Likes
If you can vacform an enclosure in styrene why not do one in kydex and work directly with that? Or some other thermoform plastic?
https://www.piedmontplastics.com/products/kydex That would save a ton of time and mess.
1 Like
Because I already have a metric shit-tonne of fibreglass 
and also, kydex is not especially easy to find here (australia) in large sizes, is expensive, and I don’t have a vac former… yet.
3 Likes
Lol. Fair enough.
I am getting very close to investing in some silicone though. I want to use it to make both fibreglass and urethane parts… for the fibreglass parts, I would only need the silicone as a ‘skin’ in a fibreglass mold, but for the urethane parts I want to make, i would want the whole mold to be silicone.
Is there a good product you can recommend?
You’re in Australia? I live in Canada I’m not exactly sure what comparable product
overlaps we have. I found https://www.smooth-on.com/distributor-regions/australia-new-zealand/
They have two locations in your country. I don’t love most of their products, but the mold star series is not bad. Are you planing on doing a brush up mold or matrix? Do you have a supplier that you already go to?
2 Likes