February Poll

We want to hear about what you would like to see in the store during February so please get your votes in! We’re focusing on Head Sculpts in this Poll for some new alien heads.

What new Head Sculpts would you like to see next?
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Crafting and casting a Batuu door design

We started to craft the door design in 2D then imported into 3D to create the shapes for the various elements – the doors; the frame and finally the surround with the carvings saying “Antiquities” over the entranceway.

We used a Photon Mono printer to create the master parts before we started to mould them in silicone rubber for cold casting in resin. We approached it this was because the time to print a door was nearly 10 hours long, and to cast with 2-part resin once the mould was made, only takes 90 minutes!

Closeup of the raw door panels as they came off the printer. These were cleaned up with sandpaper before priming and moulding.

It was important we provided two scales for our customers (6″ and 3.75″) so the printer worked fulltime to create these door sections. We took moulds of each door design, then distressed the originals to add ‘battle damage’ and some sections for rust. After this was done, we then made another silicone mould for this variant.

This approach gave us 2 different designs, in two scales and the master moulds would be suitable for a lot of castings in the future.

Standard door in 6" vs the 'battle damaged' door on the right in 3.75" scale.

Next section to get this treatment was the main carved arch at the top, together with the side sections of the curved opening. In the image below there are the two scales and due to the size, had to printed in 2 parts on the printer!

After some careful assembly and filling, the Dremel drill was applied to the surface (a quality dust mask was obligatory!) and the surface was carved to look like stone. After about 30 minutes, they ended up being detailed with a texture that would be great for moulding.

Carved sections with texture - before and after.

We used our Redflare Mould Box to create the master silicone mould. Each piece was carefully mounted to the base and sealed so no silicone would bleed underneath. The box was assembled and sealed using hot-glue and we sprayed the parts and box interior with Silicone Release Spray.

Each mould used about 1kg of silicone and takes about 8 hours to cure so this was the longest part of the project – and the most boring. Typically the mould was poured so it cured overnight. It was important to degas the silicone too, using a vacuum pump.

Parts ready for moulding.

Once the mould was cured, we ran a test cast using 2-part professional casting resin and the result was perfect as you can see below!

Cast comes out of the mould.

Here is a painted version of the 3.75″ Batuu door with a figure for scale. You can also watch a great video on the build from the links below.

Part 1 and 2 of the build and paint of the Batuu door

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