The Skull Crawler Plastic Casting with Alumilite

[IMAGE1.JPG - NO CAPTION] The Skull Crawler Plastic Casting with Alumilite Tony Arnold - StampedeProject.com Have you ever wanted to create some crazy custom cast plastic RC masterpiece, but thought you needed a $million plastic machine? Alumilite has the answer with simple and easy molding and casting products that are limited only by your imagination. In my case I just finally watched the latest Pirates movie and just had to do a skull and bones themed custom crawler. Keeping in mind I am a decent engineer but not the most artistically talented, I elected for a relatively simple plan of a few small skull heads here and there and rustic pirate-ish style chassis plates. Plastic Molding Basics You need three things to form a part. You need the "original", a "mold" of that original, and "casting material". Alumilite's "Pour a Mold", "Super Casting Kit", and "Amazing Mold Putty" kits makes the molding and casting process easy. Alumilite Mold Materials Alumilite's Pour a Mold is pretty simple stuff, drop the part you want to cast into a vessel just big enough to hold the part, mix the Pour a Mold per instructions, pour over the part, and wait 20 hours - yes "hours". The result is a super flexible custom re-useable silicon mold that allows the original to be easily freed, and will allow you to make about 50 food, ice, wax and/or resin casts before it wears out. [IMAGE5.JPG - NO CAPTION - NOTE MAKE THIS PART OF A SMALL PICTURE GROUP] The Play Dough like Amazing Mold Putty is almost the same idea, sets in under 15 minutes, and I found was a ton easier to use. Knead a 50/50 mix of the putty and hardener by hand, form it over the part, wait 15minutes and the result is a flexible re-useable silicon mold - very simple. [IMAGE9.JPG - NO CAPTION - NOTE MAKE THIS PART OF A SMALL PICTURE GROUP] Alumilite Urethane Casting Resin Of course the mold is only half the process, you still need a casting material. Luckily Alumilite's non-toxic Urethane Casting Resin is also very simple to use. Mix for 30 seconds enough of a 50/50 blend of base and activator to fill your mold, pour in the mix and in under 10 minutes you can pop out your newurethane part. Nothing except more silicon will stick to the mold, so you can even spray or hand paint the inside of the mold before pouring in the Casting Resin - the result will be a perfectly painted part produced. Dust the inside of the mold with Alumilite's gunmetal finish like I did for the chassis plates, shake out the excess, and out pops a sterling silver cast looking part. Urethane parts are not as strong as say RPM's nylon based parts, but they are pretty durable for non-stressed parts. Need a long machine screw with a skull head? No problem, place the screw head in the part after pouring in the Resin and the screw will solidly set in the part. Once set, the parts can be sanded, drilled, Dremled and painted just like wood. Finding & Making the Originals The skulls in this project were easily made with a Pour a Mold cast of a skull cigarette plug light, waiting 20 hours and then start cranking out cast skull heads. The chassis plates were a little tougher. [IMAGE4.JPG - NO CAPTION] [IMAGE6.JPG - NO CAPTION - NOTE MAKE THIS PART OF A SMALL PICTURE GROUP] [IMAGE8.JPG - NO CAPTION - NOTE MAKE THIS PART OF A SMALL PICTURE GROUP] Since the resin isn't quite strong enough on it's own, I made a template of my current Axial Scorpion chassis plates using a band saw and some scrape aluminum plate. I covered one plate with about 1/2" of Sculpey modeling clay. I sketched a design and went to work with a toothpick and Swiss Army knife to carve out an rustic looking skull and bones pattern on the clay and added some insets for machine screws. Once complete, I baked the clay plate for 30 minutes on 275 for a final hardened ceramic like cast-able original. [IMAGE7.JPG - NO CAPTION - NOTE MAKE THIS PART OF A SMALL PICTURE GROUP] [IMAGE10.JPG - CAPTION - Final molds ready for casting.] The next task was to make a mold from the hardened original by working the mixed Amazing Mold Putty over the original and waiting 15 minutes for the mold to cure. I dusted the inside of the mold with metallic paint and poured in a batch of Casting Resin for the left and right chassis plates. In two hours after pulling the original from the oven I had two side plates casts in hand. Final Assembly The parts came out of the mold almost ready to assemble only with a few Dremel and Xacto knife touch ups. I drilled and tapped the skull heads after an aged paint effect and secured them to the chassis. [IMAGE3.JPG - NO CAPTION] Conclusion I used some basic Alumilite kits, however Alumilite also supplies various colors and formulas in quantities from small testers sizes to one-gallon containers and of course a ton of various "mix-in's". Aside from possibly screwing up a mold, and having to redo it, the only downsides are that these kits do get messy - rubber gloves are required equipment. From simple to complex casting projects, Alumilite line of casting products can help everyone form the artistically challenged (like myself) to the truly talented produce some amazingly creative parts. Once the ugly job of making the originals and the molds are over, casting parts is very easy and quick. Alumilite is also super light weight, so the performance tuning of my Axial Crawler is relatively un-affected by the "art". The final Skull Crawler looks like cast silver and bone - truly a crawler any real pirate would be proud of. [IMAGE2.JPG - NO CAPTION] ------Call Out--------- Custom Crawler Build Axial Scorpion Chassis Axial Accessories Custom Alumilite Chassis RCP Crawler Rear Fixed Axel Kit & Steering Hubs Castle Creations Mamba Max Medusa Research 1300Kv Brushless Motor A123 Racing Receiver Pack JR Servo Spectrum Receiver -------------------------- ------------------ Sources: Axial - www.AxialRacing.com, Tekin - www.TeamTekin.com, Castle Creations - www.CastleCreations.com, RCP Crawlers - www.RCPCrawlers.com, A123 Racing - www.A123Racing.com, Medusa Research - www.MedusaProducts.com, JR Servo - www.JRradios.com, Spectrum - www.SpectrumRC.com,