Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Epoxy Shingles and Tiles - Solution or bigger problem?

The frames I have been making with epoxy designs are easily used as large tiles. I have made some small tiles, but their usefulness isn't obvious besides for decorative coasters. The car emblems that I have made are also like small tiles and are very versatile in that they can moved around on a metal surface. I just gave my son a bag of those so that he could cover his car with them and I can't wait until I see what happens with them. Epoxy tiles are not a bad idea, but if you tried to seal a surface with them it would get down to the seams and how well the seams are packed with some type of good that could weaken or support the entire surface.

My latest experiments with printing epoxy has resulted in printed skins, or gels of epoxy with a design in them. If I rethink the layout of these epoxy gels, I can easily see how I could make them into shingles and even decorative shingles. The difference of a shingle versus a tile is the way they are applied and a shingle has an overlapping design that keeps moisture from getting under the surface by simply layering the shingles. The thinness of the shingle is what allows this to work, although there are the Spanish style roofs that use large curved clay shingles as a sort of drainage system on a roof. These types of roofs look great, but they also look heavy and potentially fragile if you didn't know how to walk on them. In fact the drainage system that the overlapping Spanish style shingles create could be imitated in a micro-scale with epoxy shingles, sort of like a lenticular design of hills and valleys molded into the shingles themselves.

Would the flexibility of using epoxy shingles, that could even be mounted to plywood permanently with an epoxy coating, be a good solution to making an exterior shell on a structure that would keep water out?

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