Epoxy Mold Making Kit

Yes, certainly chemical release agents such as our Easy Composites Easy-Lease Chemical Release Agent are ideal for use with Epoxy based moulds and will give a very good, reliable release.

No, the sheet wax is not in the kit as it is unique to that specific type of mould we made.  However, sheet wax is available here:  Sheet Wax

The PVA is an alternative to the Mould release wax and is commonly used where difficult surfaces or materials may cause sticking issues.  The down side is the surface finish with PVA is not as good so the mould may need polishing to improve the finish. 

Hi Chris, yes, it's perfectly suitable for taking moulds directly off metal parts. The release agents included in the kit (the #8 mould release wax and PVA release agent) are both suitable for use on metal. If the metal is highly polished (like chrome) then it would be better to just use multiple coats of the mould release wax as it's difficult to get PVA to apply evenly to very smooth or shiny surfaces.

If you wish to post cure a part in the mould, you need to ensure that the mould has first been post cured before you make the part. This is so that the gelcoat does not soften during the parts post cure cycle as doing so will likely distort the mould and result in the part sticking to the mould.

A good all round post cure cycle for the Mould is as follows:

• 24 hours at 25°C
• 2 hours at 40°C
• 2 hours at 50°C
• 2 hours at 60°C

That will leave the mould with a HDT of around 60°C.

We do not recommend this Starter kit for use with out of autoclave pre-pregs. It does not have a high enough heat distortion temperature for pre-preg use.

However, we have developed a high temperature version of the materials in this kit with EG160 High Temp Epoxy Tooling Gelcoat being the tooling gelcoat and EMP160 Epoxy Moulding Paste the paste to back it up to complete the mould. This new high temperature tooling system has been designed to work perfectly with our XPREG® XC110 Out Of Autoclave pre-preg system.

Yes the Mould Making Putty can be used as part of the Epoxy Mould Making System to do small 2 part moulds. The system is ideal for smaller mouldings where speed of application and ease of use are critical. Care needs to be taken to plan your mould split lines to give you the best release.

The surface produced with a mould using our Mould Making Putty and Epoxy Tooling Gel-Coat is perfectly suitable for resin infusion as long as you make the mould with suitable size flanges for the bagging materials to fit on. In fact, the mould we use in the resin infusion video tutorial is made with this exact system (you can tell because it's bright green!).

However, in a practical sense, you may find that for larger moulds, the process will leave you with very heavy moulds which will be hard to handle and move around. For larger moulds we would generally recommend switching over to our Uni-Mould Complete Mould Making Kit as the system produces much easier to handle large moulds as well as being better value on larger surface areas. The Uni-Mould system can also be used, with a post cure, for elevated temperature curing and also out of autoclave pre-pregs up to 90 °:C, which helps improve the versatility of your moulds.

The Epoxy Tooling Gelcoat used in the production of these moulds is a very tough gelcoat which should be capable of hundreds of releases. Mould-life is mainly shortened by particularly robust demoulding procedures or by surface scratches accumulating from less careful handling. The tooling gelcoat can however be re-polished to restore its gloss and extend the life of the mould.

The HDT (heat distortion temperature) of the gelcoat and the putty in this kit is 60°C. For a better higher temperature mould system I would suggest our Easy Composites Uni-Mould which is quite happy up to around 90°C in regular use.

The regular kit is suitable for making a mould around 30cm by 30cm. The Large kit is suitable for making a single mould up to about 60 x 60cm in size. Alternatively, you could use the kits to make multiple smaller moulds. There is not restriction on how many smaller moulds you could make; the containers are all resealable providing you have enough material in the kit.