painting your molds in base color?

[raser13]

hey guys. just came across this how to video from alumilite themselves. basically they say to prepaint your base color directly onto the mold. that way once you have poured your resin into the mold. it will chemically bond the paint to the resin part. and that all the paint will come off of the mold once you pull the resin part out of the mold.

is this some new form of awesome witchcraft?? has everyone been doing this all along and i have just been missing them doing this step?? is alumilite just spreading bs around? and this doesn't work. how would the resin degas itself with the paint closing off the surface??

Any help to unscramble my blown mind would greatly appreciated. i really want to know. because this will really save me some time if you can really do this. here's a link to the video so that you can see what i'm talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5eAJabEb60

[Kylwell]

Interesting. I wonder if it shortens the mold life?

[EVApodman]

The person in the video paints the mold silver and then pours in the resin. After he pulls the casting out of the mold he then paints it a whitesh color as its final color. The only thing I can see in the video is that the silver paint acts as primer coat for the resin so the final coat will adhere tightly without any flaking once it's dry.

I'd also like to point out that this is a relatively simply casting and pull from the mold. Most of the castings for modelers are more complex and whether you could paint evenly into a typical model mold and get the same result is uncertain.

[Kylwell]

He's painting gloss white. Very thin coats. Check the can he's using.

[DaveVan]

When I was casting some folks did paint their molds as a mold release. Worked OK but I never tried it.

[raser13]

i was just wondering. i've never seen it done before.i was wondering if there were any drawbacks to it. i know you have to prep resin surfaces before painting for leaching chemicals.so i didn't know if the paint would peel of after a while or not. i figured if it was a thing everyone here would be doing it. thought it might have been a new idea. might have to do some experimenting.

[Kekker]

I've been doing this with the teeny greebly molds for the Discovery. I found that painting the mold with Tamiya white primer, I can use that UV setting resin. Without it the surface doesn't seem to cure completely, leaving the part sticky. Painting it first gives crisper detail and a nice hard surface. Plus it's pre-primed, so less detail gets covered up.

I've been using the resin in a pen stuff, but I recently bought a larger bottle that is supposed to be used for nails. This kind cures harder than the repair kind.

I like the UV stuff because making tiny amounts of two-part resin is nigh-on impossible, and I can get just the right amount in the mold and make it even before curing. Plus, it doesn't have a time limit on pushing it around and getting bubbles out. With no measuring or mixing and almost instant curing it makes the process quicker when making multiple copies.

Kev