Mould Making Material Supplies

1. Resin(AB resin)
Advantages: good fluidity, low shrinkage, nice feel for the finished mould, mixing ratio of 1:1
Disadvantages: Its curing reaction is fast, which is maybe difficult for a new learner to handle. The price is somewhat expensive, producing much heat, susceptible to water.

2. Silicone rubber

(1) Advantages: Perfect for capturing fine details, perfect resistance of shock, tear, extreme temperature, food-grade and environmentally friendly(just for addition cure type , condensation cure type can not contact with food), easy molding step, easy demoulding for cured mould. The curing time of it is short (3-5 hours), able to be in Practical production after 24 hours. High quality silicone material can reused for hundreds of or thousands of times.

(2)Disadvanges: When you make molds for big-sized product, you need a outer shell to protect the soft mould from deformation. You have to be careful about the bubbles during the moulding process(to solve this problem, you’d better use vacuum pumping machine, or simply lower your speed when pouring the silicone, and for brushing method, you need to brush the first layer quite thinly and evenly)
 

3. Metals((bronze, aluminum, lead, silver and gold)): dimensionally stable and durable, but expensive and hard to capture fine details and difficult to demould. 
 

4. Plaster: cheap but crisp and difficult to demould. You should be very careful in the molding process, other wise you will have start all over.
 

5. Other mold materials: Plastic, concrete,latex rubber, paste maker, moulage, gelatin, white rubber , polymer, and so on. 
 

There are no perfect molding material with the ability to make molds for all kinds of original model. Which molding material should be chosen depends on which kind of original model you have in hand.