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Opinions and advice required

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DaddyG

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Graham
I am now looking into casting my own blanks and am pickling my brain trying to sort out what i need.

Think I'm ok with sourcing a pressure pot, but do I need a vacuum chamber to de-gas first? don't think I will go down the stabalising route just yet.

My choice of resins are Zencast P6 for the opaque blanks, and Aluminite Clear for the others.

Am I right in thinking I will be able to use the same addition cure silicon moulds for both of these resins.

Any advice or recommendations greatly recieved
 
Bucks

Bucks

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Paul
No you don’t need a vacuum chamber Graham, just the pressure pot. Both the the Zencast P6 & Alumilite clear are perfectly fine for pen blanks, I,ve used both with no problems and the Addition cured moulds are suitable for all resins.

I’m sure you’ll find making your own blanks just as much fun as the pen turning itself.
 
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DaddyG

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Joined
Dec 11, 2017
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Redcar
First Name
Graham
Thank You for that Paul, glad i'm on getting sorted. Will probably be in touch regarding the moulds.

Can you suggest and other polyurethane resins that may be suitable? The P6 I found on Easy Composites and the Aluminite from Metaclay.
 
Bucks

Bucks

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They are the two that I use & would recommend, maybe start with the P6 for playing around & experimenting as that’s a lot cheaper than the Alumilite, also bear in mind the Polyurethane resins only have about a 3 month shelf life.
By the way the blanks you purchased from me was P6.
 
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DaddyG

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Joined
Dec 11, 2017
Posts
127
Location
Redcar
First Name
Graham
Thanks again Paul, I really enjoyed turning your blanks they were by far the easiest to turn and finish.

Can I also ask roughly how much resin in weight is needed for a pen blank? trying to work out how many blanks i will get out of a bottle of P6.

IMG_20180528_194917405.jpg

IMG_20180528_194809901.jpg
 
Bucks

Bucks

Fellow
Joined
Apr 26, 2016
Posts
1,425
Location
North Yorkshire
First Name
Paul
Sorry for the late reply Graham, with it being the busy time of the year for our day job, keeping up with the mould orders etc, hospital appointments & trying to have some quality family time with the kids, there’s just not enough hours in the day (That’s why I haven’t posted on the forum recently)

In our block moulds which are 150mm x 135mm we use 470grams of resin when casting 7 x 18mm square blanks or 530g resin for 6 x 20mm square blanks, this gives us leeway for cutting & sanding & polishing the blanks for selling.
Using our vertical casting moulds (which we haven’t got round to adding to the website) we use 55g of resin for a 20mm diameter blank.
I recon with starting out you may wanting to cast smaller quantities, in something like our single or double pen blank moulds, unfortunately I don’t have the exact quantities for them as we have only really cast either the slabs or the round singles in our vertical moulds, but the quantities for those should give you a rough idea.
Note: these quantities are for the P6 & Alumilite Clear, other resins may vary due to differing weights of the resins, Eg if using polyester resin we use more like 600g of Resin in our slabs.

Hope this helps a bit & great Pens by the way.
 
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