Of Reusable Mold Making Materials

Regular mold making materials such as clay, alginate, plaster bandages, silicone rubber and polyurethane rubber are good for single use. In other words, you can use them to make a mold once and that is it. While clay, silicone or polyurethane molds can be used multiple times, the material itself cannot be used again to form a new mold.

Perhaps the only reusable mold making material is thermoset mold rubber!

Thermoset mold rubber comes in a box and has to be heated (in a microwave) until it melts completely. Now the molten rubber is directly poured into the mold box to completely cover the model. That’s it, no measuring or mixing is required. It gradually hardens on cooling, and soon a flexible rubber mold is ready for use.

The mold made can be repeatedly used to produce multiple casts without any noticeable degradation whatsoever. And once you are finally done using the thermoset rubber mold, it can easily be melted and reused to make new molds quite effectively. In fact, some thermoset mold rubbers such as Wizbe’s Composi-Mold can be re-melted and reused as many as 35 times!

Three variants of Composi-Mold are available at EnvironMolds website artmolds.com
  • Composi-Mold-LT - a soft flexible rubber which sets similar to a Shore A 10.
  • Composi-Mold-PowerMold - a firmer version for making two part or push molds with Shore A 25 hardness.
  • ComposiMold-FC - a FDA compliant food grade mold rubber.
In sum, thermoset mold rubber is an extremely cost-effective option over the regular polyurethanes for sure!

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