Thursday, August 16, 2012
Is there ever a too thin when you're on an epoxy diet?
You know you've reached a limit of too thin when your pieces rip apart when you pull them from a mold. You know your pieces are too thin when your finger pushes through the piece with just a slight amount of pressure. You know your piece is too thin when you can see through it at the thickest point and when you turn it 90 degrees it's too thin to see at all. I suppose all of those are descriptions of problems associated with pieces being too thin, but it is a fun problem to have. I have even tried to make some super thin veneers on material so that I can see just how thin I can go with this basic epoxy that I get from Douglas and Sturgess in Richmond, but there does not see to be a limit on the mixture itself, only a practical limit for the material to be used in making things.
I've been mixing atomized metals like aluminum into the epoxy and one effect is that when the particles are too thin to travel with the mixture of epoxy it becomes clear. The epoxy is filling crevices and cracks in the mold, but the particles can't always travel through to the same spaces. I've started mixing Thixo HP in the epoxy as a filler to keep the particles more evenly mixed, but this does keep some of the detail out and creates a few air bubbles in places. The flexibility of the epoxy increases as the thickness decreases. In some cases the pieces appear thinner than the backing paper and adhesive sticker papers are that I am applying to the backs. Definitely too thin in that case, but it's fun to have to think about thickening up a piece because I have to.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment