This process is not recommended nor
encouraged by
Playmobil® or the Garden
Wargaming staff.
There are no graphics presently for Home
Manufacturing. However, we're sure that there are some brave
souls who will plunge right in and try their hand at making
their own accessories and figures. We admire their courage
and wish them luck.
The Plastic Material:
We have used Alumilite for several years
with great success. Unlike epoxy resins, it doesn't have an
obnoxious odor nor does it just keep on curing and curing
and curing. We are old metal gravity casters and have always
been able to get exactly what we wanted, ranging in size
from 15mm to 90mm, by using lead/tin alloys and rtv molds.
When we decided to try plastic, we didn't have any idea what
we were doing. We tried everything until we found Alumilite.
(We can't even remember how we actually stumbled on to it,
but we know that it was quite a few years ago.) Alumilite of
course is nothing at all like molten metal. You can't throw
your waste, or your mistakes, back into the pot. And,
regardless of what they tell you, it does NOT pour like
metal. The darn stuff is like molasses and sets up too
quickly to be poured into a mold. Now for the good part.
When you pour molten metal into a mold you have to have a
sprue and air vents. Learning how to design and create the
proper sprue and vents is critical to successfully casting
metal. Not so with Alumilite. The best technique that we've
found is "Smash Casting."
Smash Casting:
With Smash Casting there is no sprue nor
are there any vents. We use RTV and make two halves, but not
exactly as we would for a "pour casting" mold. The only
trick here is to indent your impression deeper on one half
and raise your impression on the other half so that you can
slightly overflow the indented half with the Alumilite. By
doing this you are able to fully fill your mold cavity thus
avoiding any voids in your finished casting. If you just
smashed two "normal" halves together you would trap air
between the two. Your mold must be recessed or "indented" on
one side and "raised" on the other so you can slightly
overflow your indented half thus avoiding trapped air. As
you can imagine, trapped air will produce all kinds of voids
and air bubbles and other little "nasties" which will ruin
your finished casting. You put the two halves of the molds
together after you pour the Alumilite into the two open
sides. The process of casting one sided molds has been
around for a long time. "Smash Casting" is just the next
step in using this process to produce a fully round casting
in just one step. Alumilite is available from:
http://www.alumilite.com/
Now to answer the most asked question,
"Will this process work for little accessory pieces as well
as large Playmobil figures?" YES, regardless of the size,
all come out great. You will be amazed at the detail. You
will also be amazed at how easy it is and how little waste
and cleaning you will have with a little practice. Let us
know how you do and if you have any more questions as you
get into it.
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