One of the main reasons I finally decided to get a 3D printer recently is exactly because I want the convenience of being able to create masters from which I can make molds for resin casting. It just makes so much more sense! I'm glad you broke it down so well in this video!
This is exactly what Games Workshop does for any of the Warhammer nerds hanging out here. They print masters, then create plastic injection molds from those. Masters are usually handed over to marketing, who paint them up to use for promotional materials while the machinery is being made.
This explains all the little mom and pop shops that do miniatures I like to order. I've always wondered how they do large quantities of models for cheap when the quality is usually really good. The Perry brothers come to mind since they're a relatively well-known operation out of the UK. You basically have these two guys and their parents making stuff by hand and shipping it all over world. I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this information, but it's always helpful to know how things are made (even if you don't use that information right away).
This Is so helpfull, for now I've been doing casting here and there as a hobby but I would like to start with a small production, I still have a lot to learn tho 😊 your videos are awesome thank you for the effort
Can I just say I appreciate your post-print cleaning station. In a similar fashion, I use old screw top ice cream jars for my cleaning station because they seal well when not in use, and I can just throw the whole thing out when the alcohol is spent. The ice cream jars are great because they are clear plastic, so you can seal the container and still see your parts. My grandmother loves that brand of ice cream so I just get the empty containers from her lol I also use them for small parts storage if I'm taking something apart or need to store something for a season.
Thanks for another great video, Robert. I’m a lean process manager, so I’m very into time and motion studies. I’m a hobbyist, so I rarely maximize efficiencies in my personal shop, but this has inspired me to do some rudimentary timings of my core tasks.
Great video! Mainly confirming my suspicions. It always aches me to see people produce in inefficient ways. This isn't just limited to printing times, but also to material choices. I know people that design parts with large flat surfaces and print the entire thing, while it's much more beneficial to only print the edges or only print connecting parts while using existing materials for flat surfaces like MDF plate, multiplex, acrylic plate or something similar. This often also adds to the material experience. Back in the days these additional materials were called 'vitamins', but since a couple of years it seems the new order of printing enthusiasts has forgotten the term.
of course mr youtube algorithm hasnt shown me your channel as soon as you start going into the topic of 3dprinting (as in, 70% of my figure making), can't wait to check out the rest and catch up!
As someone who does casting, as well as Nerf using Out of Darts was a perfect example. A lot of the third party accessory items, kits, or the blaster themselves are painfully expensive and this video accidentally gave a bit of insight as to why that is.
Thanks for mentioning time and motion studies. For my small business, casting is still not an option, the ability to print on demand for small batch orders outweighs the benefits from casting, for now. I will definitely keep casting in mind should my volumes increase, thanks for the tips.
Good to see you back . Nothing like a good time and motion video to show the best of both methods. I think with a quick setting resin up to four cycles an hour would be possible . Great vid as usual .
It’s nice to be back, but vacations are nice too! The problem with quicksetting resins is that you often can’t fill the cavities fast enough before the resin begins to set. So it’s a balancing act between how many cavities there are in a given mold and how fast you can fill them. Plus some shapes fill very easily as this one did in this video, others feel slowly because of the inlet sprue, etc.
@@RobertTolone that's what I mean with this mould and a big open pour area . Good to see it was a holiday , last time you went missing in action it wasn't the most pleasant .
Bob, you know better than most, you have to start at the beginning before you can reap the benefits. It all depends how fast you can make the first master. Then it’s a question of production like you said. If you only have one master it will take you forever to complete a job. You’ve showed us time and again to hang the master so that you can maximize your time and your money. If you rely on printing each master over and over, you’ll go broke. If you take that master and gang your production setup, now your cooking. Best regards, Richard
For this video, I focused on the production casting, not the creation of the master because that depends on a different set of factors. Are you faster at hand sculpting or at digital sculpting? For me, it has always been that hand sculpting is faster. Unless the master is something of mechanical design. Then it is easier to design it in CAD. But that is changing. I practice digital sculpting in Blender every day.
A lot also depends on the resin printer you have since the time to print is dependant only on model and layer height, not number of pieces so a large print area can in this instance print a lot of pieces at once.
Sure, and if you have 500 3d printers with staff to run them it can produce one every nine seconds! Or you could just continue to increase the number of cavities you can pour resin in, until you are fully occupied the entire time. Obviously there are variables at play, but the fundamentals don't change much.
pros and cons to each. guess 'nuff said on that. something maybe to keep in mind is what brings you the most satisfaction? most men aren't going to feel very satisfied pushing a button, walking away, and calling that work. casting would be much more hands on, no? with that in mind, there's a certain pride involved. after all, we're builders at heart. us older guys are probably going to lean more towards casting, that's just our nature having (hopefully) a certain work ethic instilled in us. it's going to feel as if we made something with our hands, not letting a machine do it for us. it's not anti-technology or throwing all efficiency out the window, but if it's in the same ballpark, i think many of us would pick the slightly less money-making process in favor of the one that makes us happier.
Printing has near 0 setup time - if you already got a 3D model. But if you have to design your model vs sculpting it in reality that is a different story - depending on the material and design creating a real life sculpture can be a lot faster even, reducing the time-benefit of 3D printing. Another big difference between the 2 is surface-finish and mechanical performance. 3D printing, even with good SLA printers, has a visible surface texture that needs post-processing for every single part. If you use that processed part for creating the mold then the work was only done once but you get the benefit every single time. And then strength - with FDM the strength is abysmal, the SLA it is not bad but you are severely limited by material. And having the same object cast will in general be twice as strong if not more, just cause it lacks the layer-induced anisotropy. Friend and me made a RC drone and we first printed the body and flight-tested it, then prepared the surface and made some negatives, then tested it to destruction. Didn't take much to destroy it as just cranking up the motors to max exceeded the layer-adhesion and the body started delaminating. With the mold we just added 1 layer of fibreglass and made the shell just half as thick. It was way lighter and sturdier. 3D printing really made prototyping and creating molds waaaayyy easier. WAlso: hy no blade-guard nor riving-kife?
Hey, listen... I don't wanna be 'UA-cam unfaithful' to my man the CrafsMan, but your name is ALSO my host. These casting videos kick all the ass. The end and I have spoken.
Robert, whenever I do a cup mold, I hold it together by putting it in the same sized cup. I cut the bottom of the cup and use baby powder to help the mold pop in and out easily. It holds the seams together perfectly, with no need for rubber bands.
Actually from someone who does both I would have to say resin casting is quicker, Plus there is no need for post cleanup in terms of alcohol washing and curing with a UV light.
So first, almost any time you are dealing with scale casting, stamping, injection molding, etc will be faster than 3D printing once you've taken into account tooling time. So there is typically a minumum volume after which casting becomes faster and cheaper. And a time and motion study is a good tool to build sense on determining that. But i have a problem with this video and that is curing time for the mold was ignored in the time to make the mold and that time matters. That 18 hours spent curing is time that could be spent printing parts and it's a constant. And since most 3D slicing software can give you an estimate of print time you can easily do the math on whether it is worth it to do the mold. I get why it was ignored since you can fit the curing into overnight or do other stuff while it is curing. But the same applies to 3D printing especially if you know how to do stacking since you can stack to fill the entire build volume turning it into a 9-14 hour print on something like the mars 2.
Hi Robert, this is exactly what I was looking for, in my case I have 3d printing business and I have been using my resin printer for print one small product that is just 3cm tall, I can print 60pcs in 2 hours but unfortunately there is a log proccess for the final product because after the wash and cure procces I have to sand them and apply 3 layers of clear coat because these need to have a shiny and smooth surface and them label them, now I'm thinking to make a mold for cast epoxy resin, since if I make the molds with the parts with the clear coat applied I don't will require to apply it if I cast it because the mold with replicate the surface so will be something like pour resin on mold, take them out and label them, a big time safer. Customer have placed orders of 150pcs, just imagine how much time these took me😅 In your case what silicone do you use for the molds? I'm trying to find one that be almost clear because my plan is to use uv epoxy resin so cure time would be faster than normal epoxy resin
i have heard that new rubber molds can retain the glossy finish of the part the mold was created for, but over time the rubber molds can become dull. have not tested this myself. just fyi
Love the video am not trying to take anything away from it. However, for most people it's less about the time it takes and more about money it costs So if you need a video idea, you could figure out the cost (whats cheaper), the effort you need to put in, and tools/skills need to do it well, Although you'd need to put in a lot of work as it is quite a lot of info youd need to gather to make the video so I get if it's to much of a effort as you have a main business n a life to deal with.
Hi Bob. I know the initial resin prints were for the master mold. But the resin printing of that thickness should be hollow. The middle of the model will never be fully cured and will deteriorate over time. Also, a final curing of the model in some sort of UV lightbox, not just a cleaning. Not sure if you covered that in this video.
@@RobertTolone The light can't penetrate the outer layers of opaque resin to fully cure the inside on a solid model that size - at least, that's the theory. I'd be keen to see you cut one of those in half on a band saw to see if the inside is still tacky.
Hi Robert!! I find your videos really instructive and fun to watch. I am starting in mold casting and I wonder what is the average lifespan of a silicone rubber mold. How many resin casts can I get from a single mold? Thank you and keep on with this great work! Congratulations!
one issue i have seen is that if you need parts with a glossy finish, new rubber molds will retain that finish, but can become dull over time, long before the mold actually wears out
Great video Robert!, very interesting see how to combine 3d printing and resin casting, also would be interesant to see comparasion price between two technologies. Thanks!
I buy my casting resin in 5 gallon buckets. The printing resin comes in 1 L bottles. So for me printing resin is much, much more expensive than casting resin.
Neat test. Everybody loves 3D printers, but if you need it in bulk, it's far better to cast. And if you need a one off, better to 3D print. That's why I've never understood the 3D printer farms. If you need that many, you might as well cast it, doesn't take that much time investment to do so.
Because you can print on demand. You don't need a physical master to make a mold from. And each printer could be doing a different object. Imagine a client sends you 5 3D model files saying "I need 4 of this, 2 of that, 3 of the other, etc. " You just say OK and start the printers. No time spent making molds for each.
@@3DJapan Sure, and I suppose that happens a lot these days. That would fit in the realm of "one off", and I'm sure there's a lot of business in it. However, when you need tons of prints of the same objects and people go to a printer farm, that specifically is what doesn't make sense and it too happens a lot these days.
@@daliasprints9798 If you don't have to remove rafts or supports, then yeah, no post processing, but it'll still be slower than casting even accounting for sprue removal.
Another wonderful video. I’m VERY interested in doing 3D printing as a master and then making slush molds to get as close to a designer vinyl toy as possible with flexible resin. Which resin would you use thy could be tinted any color and also be flexible like soft pvc vinyl?
I don’t cast flexible objects so I have never figured out the combination of materials to use. Elastomers are a whole other universe from resins. What little I have done taught me that there are nice urethane rubbers to work with but they have their own requirements. For instance, they often won’t cure in silicone molds and they are extremely sticky - in fact make an excellent adhesives. You could possibly hollow cast urethane rubber in a solid 3D printed mold but you will need a very effective mold release or barrier coat.
@@RobertTolone Absolutely. If I were back in the US, I’d buy up a bunch and try them out, but here in japan, resins and urethanes are basically a one size fits all type, no real options…
kind of reminds me of the shop i used to own with my then-wife, where we did screenprinting and vinyl. our standard was an order of 20+ shirts would be screenprinted, small order would be done in vinyl. i think that's very analogous, e.g. the 'mass-production' method took up so much more set-up time and a tremendous amount of physical space, but in the end saved time... but, there was more scrap and had very real costs. i could go on and on, the point being it just depends. how many pulls are you going to get out of your molds, especially if there's finer detail? 12-15? without a printer, you're going to be making many molds to make enough pieces to make into a gang mold. you simply have to know your costs and your times. if you rent work space, that costs per square foot, so you have to justify that, too. but, at one part with your printer farm i'd have to ask, 'what are we doing here?'
Do you take orders for molds? I have designs but no access or experience with this side of production. Would love to be able to make resin models with some of your custom molds!
Nice! What materials are you using? I recently tried resin casting but ran into a huge issue with curing. The silicone I wanted to make the mold out of wouldn't harden around the print. I ended up sealing the print with a generous amount of varnish which helped but the mold was not smooth at all and in some harder-to-varnish areas, still sticky. The silicone was curing 90 minutes but the epoxy resin took almost 2 days and remained flexible on long, slim details
ONE: AWESOME VIDEO AS PER USUAL!!! Just a fun and casual little experiment! Love it! TWO: I noticed your print has ZERO elephants foot, what's your secret there? Or did you build the model with kind of a buffer for EF? THREE: I havent finished the video as I'm posting this, but my 3D printer went from my 'main toy' making thing to my "Amazing master-making" thing. Its SO USEFUL to have 3-4 fully detailed masters lying around. Sometimes I'll make 3 masters and spray them with different surfacing like gloss or matte (Matte looks amazing for that 'rubber keshi' style mold, it has that superbly rough look to it as opposed to glossy.) I REALLY thought I'd be making more actual pieces with my printer, but taking the time to make ONE really good master is SO worth it now that I own a pressure pot.
2:18 - Me: Ha ha, he said whack them with a stick, I love Robert's sense of humor. (Two seconds later) I can't believe he actually whacked them with a stick! LOL
@@RobertTolone Consider getting a WhamBam flex plate. It's a flexible magnetic sheet that sticks your build plate. It saves you from having to take the build plate off the printer-- you just take the plate off, then bend the plate to pop the models off. A small investment, and it saved me from accidentally chipping models removing them from the printer and I never have to re-level the build plate. Highly recommend! LOVE these videos as I'm currently doing a lot of this stuff myself. No doubt casting is quicker, but I'd argue for my sake, the learning curve is higher and costly (materials spent) when learning how to properly cast. Your channel has been a great aid along the way though!
Lots of people make money with printing, especially resin printing. Remember that they make bigger printers and you could fit 10 models on the plate that take the same amount of time as one.
IMO you can't compare this, first of all, resin pri!nter need always the same time, wether you are printing one or many copies. second the Elegoo Mars is not the first choice if you want produce small series, compare that to a Elegoo Jupiter which has a four times bigger bedsize (6" to 12" ), in your example you could print 12-15 copies on the Jupiter in one hour. third resin prints are in most cases hollowed out, to save resin and improve curing speed, which should be much faster than the curing of cast resin and last but not least, more complex parts with undercuts, holes, etc. are much more difficult, if you want to make a mold for them. So in general casting in molds can be the better solution for bigger parts with a geometry that fit the process, but for smaller and more complex parts, resin printing is the better way. And don't forget, that a mold doesn't last forever, so depending on the number of copies, you have to make new molds. So, as a fan of MSLA printing I only need the printer, a curingstation and the resin, i don't need to have materials for mold construction, i don't need a vacuumchamber. BUT if i want a modell with a perfect surface (no layerlines), mold casting is the only way.
@@Skoozi you are right, but my point is, that you don't choose the smalest printer for serial production, but there is no limit for the moldsize, thats why it isn't comparable. If you take the model from the video, but choose a bigger printer, you can be as fast as mold casting, but with less work, less resin. On the Elegoo Jupiter you can produce a hundred copies in eight hours too.
@@ChristofVorhauer but the actual quoted times were a mold with 3 cavities which was directly comparable to a printbed that could hold 3 prints simultaneously
on a practical level, most of your printed pieces are going to need supports, though, and that can be a lot of time spent cleaning the piece up. plus, if we're talking about a resin printer, there's nowhere near as much flexibility in terms of material. i mean, if you want something other than a hard, brittler plastic, you're s.o.l. on a resin printer, no? pros and cons to each.
A concept that I struggle to get people to understand... 3D printing is for "rapid prototyping". It's OK as a hobbyist if you're doing one-offs, but it isn't a production machine; not by itself. Casting is for production. A single 3D printer has a looooooong way to go if it wants to keep pace with casting. Something like injection molding machines can crank out 100s or even 1000s of castings an hour depending on the part.
that's why printing farms exist. while it does make sense on paper to add casting, doing that is a whole other thing. it's a huge pain in the ass to add a new process. too, these print farms are undoubtedly making ABS products, which you can't cast.
Who says it's for rapid prototyping? I sell my prints all the time either to clients or on Etsy. With a large print bed you can make a lot of models in the same amount of time that it takes for one. Add a second printer and you double that. Oh and injection molding isn't resin casting.
@@3DJapan i think he was using that as an example of production rates. on a more 'practical'-ish level, if you've got the dinero and don't need a single large size, you can always invest in a benchtop injection mold press. once dialed in, you should be able to pop a piece out about every 40 seconds or so from what i've seen in videos. there's is going to be a time in production when casting is just rather going to blow printing out of the water assuming you've got several pieces of equipment, like loaded up on pressure pots. he mentioned he's got seven and sometimes uses a faster cure silicone that can make a mold in a couple of hours. using gang molds and it's unlikely a couple of printers are going to be able to hang after a thousand pieces. aside from the satisfaction of making something by casting because we're men and it's our nature to build stuff, casting's big advantage is also the variety of materials you can use. resin printing gives you a resin product, a hard plastic that's more on the brittle side. while you obviously can't cast ABS, there are products where you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference on a practical level. pros and cons. why are you still doing etsy, though? they take most of your money, i don't get why people are still on that rip-off site and i never did buy that 'exposure' thing they claim is their big feature.
Hi, One Question thats always in my mind: When you use a Papercup as Moldbox. WHY not place the Mould in one Cup for Resincasting? You can forget about the Rubberbands? The Cup holds the siliconemould perfectly in shape. Thanks.
Because, as strange as it sounds, cups are not identical- even from the same package. I have discovered there are slight variations that can result in open parting lines on the mold. Inside the cup I have no way of massaging the mold into a tight fit. With rubber bands I can adjust the strength and position of the closing pressure. Also, casting resin produces heat and the mold expands slightly. That means it no longer fits into the cup even if it did when the mold was cold.
@@RobertTolone Thanks for taken Time to answer me. I have some of your favorite moulds (two part clay moulds ;-) ) I keep them in the rectangular box. put the second part on it like a lid/cover and have no problems with castings. but never tried with cups. Thanks
great content, very helpful! which one do you think produce more detailed product, resin casting or 3D printing? assuming i made the molding silicone with 3d printed master
I wonder how detailed you can get with a casting mold. On a Resin 3D printer you can get quite detailed. And do you print your models with a hole in the bottom, recommended to drain out any uncured resin when Printing. This is also 1 thing you don't have to do in Resin mold casting.
I’ve been looking into creating molds out of my 3D prints but I keep reading about cure inhibition. Apparently platinum silicone doesn’t like resin 3D prints. I was curious to which kind of silicone you used or how to prevent cure inhibition from happening.
I don't have much experience with casting so maybe this is something obvious I'm missing, but is there a reason you don't print the negative/mold directly rather than having to do that step manually?
Robert, is the resin that is used in a RESIN 3D PRINTER the same as the resin that you pour into a mold ?.. buying some products from SMOOTH ON , i was shocked at how expensive that they are and i am hoping for a cost effective resin to pour into the molds i want to make.. Just wondering what else i could use.
They are not the same. 3d printing resins cure by exposed to UV light. Casting resins are 2-part systems that cure by mixing the A and B components together. The mix ratio is usually 50-50 but not always. The manufacturer will specify the proper mix ratio for the resin. When mixed, the resin has a certain amount of open time before it begins to cure. It also has a time it requires to harden enough to be removed from the mold. Resin is expensive. Larger quantities cost much less per gram than small quantities. That is why I buy my resins in 5 gallon buckets. But for most hobbyist that is not practical.
@@RobertTolone Have you ever tried using FINE CEMENT as your casting material.. would that work without harming the silicone mold.. it would be so much cheaper to use CEMENT over the expensive resin.. you can buy it without rocks added as a FINE POWDER... and just add water.
I recently got some silicone rubber specifically for making 3d printed molds, but one of the first things in the instructions was a mention of curing inhibition when using UV resins (which wasn't mentioned on the product page...). My own experiments with this have shown that my resin *is* problematic. I've found that I can improve it with soaking the print in alcohol for a few hours, but it's still not perfect. Do you have any suggestions for dealing with this? Do you know if the silicone you used is specifically compatible?
Cheated time on casting three. Exclusive use of three cast models in the casting box would have been truer. By using the printer resin prints for casting, you shorted the casting time considerably
With Resin printing you should have made 3 prints in 1.5hrs not just one print. This is the difference between FDM 3D printing and Resin printing. With Resin printing Each layer cures the whole build plate in one pass. So the more you can put on the build plate the better. In FDM Filament printing You have to print one Model at a time. Taking 3x as long. So far it is neck n neck in the race.
Printing and casting arent opponents, they're complementary. You can use a printer to make the masters, then cast those, best of both worlds. That said, there are shapes a printer can do that you cant cast.
I love them both and agree they are complimentary. I also think that at the rate 3-D printing is progressing it won’t be long before resin casting will only be used by sculptors who prefer to work by hand. Even then, the day 3-D scanning and printing reaches the speed of flat scanning and printing it’s game over for silicone molds and resin casting.
@@RobertTolone i've got 7 3d printers and am well and truly into the hobby, but i've been watching your channel to learn casting. Like you pointed out, you can cast a whole load of a part way faster than printing. Especially for larger parts.
Yeah, resin casting is definitely faster and more economical when it comes to mass production. The main strength of 3D printing is the ability to print any model on demand.
You are saying that it takes the same time to cast x amount as print one. However this is an SLA set up. So it's actually the same as 3, the max you can fit on the bed. Unlike a fdm printer, it works on layer time and not nozzle workload. So not a huge difference but incorrect all the same
in my calculations I allowed for how many pieces you could gang onto a print bed. Obviously, if you had a much larger printer, or a print farm, you could print them faster.
I think you forgot one important factor: MONEY 💰💰💰 What is the total cost of the two process? If you only run a small batch, the casting will be too expensive and not as efficient. I'm curious to know about that. And with resin printer, if you have a large one (Jupiter I think?) and or many printer, you might be more efficient and cheaper compare to molding, isn't?
No one manufacturing method is better than an other one. I have seen a video where somebody really claims 3D printing will replace injection molding lol....ridiculous. Everything has it´s pro and con. 3D printing is still rapid prototyping, that´s what´s it´s there for. The big advantage to 3D printing in this use case is, if you automate the process you can print over night, it´s hard to automate this casting process here. And you can increase the amount of printers, those are cheap compared to labor.
in my (admittedly limited) experience 3D resin and FDM printers may not be the best choices when making parts that have thin, flat surfaces. the warping issues are incredibly time consuming and frustrating. definitely not something you want to deal with in a production environment. also the dimpling from removed supports, especially on flat surfaces
Kinda true but not entirely correct. As someone that does both printing and casting, you neglected that it is EXTREMELY easy to make a mold with a 3d printer rather than make a mold with silicone rubber. There is software where you drop the finished piece into a 'block' and then subtract the model from the block, you can then (in model space) cut the block in half and you then have a mold that you can cast. If you still want a 'soft' mold, you can just add flexible resin into the cast print. Once thats done, you spray the release agent onto the print, pour in your resin a remove when cured, repeat.
I don't think the preparation stages should be calculated into all this. Sure you need to make a mold first for the casting way... but you don't start building the 3d printer at the start of the project now do you. Everything ready to go, pouring VS clicking the print button, head to head, that's the fair way.
3D printing is great as a hobby but after 5 years of using an FDM printer I see no way to actually make $$ with one. As you said an average small print is over an hour, some of my prints have taken 5 days. In the end if you leave them in the sun PLA will melt lol
Since this is meant to be an apples to apples comparison, there are some issues with this analysis: - When doing a production cast, don't you normally only get a single model to work from? Using the first few 3D prints past the first feels a little cheaty and biased. - The time for silicone to cure should be counted in the time expenditure. This is production. That down time matters. It's 24 hours, not 1 or 2. As you gang more and more parts, the cut time multiplies. That counts. - Related to the first, the down time was counted for the 3D prints, but not the molds. More bias. - You can cycle 3D prints constantly. Pull the prints, dump them into your alcohol bath, top off the printer if needed, run another print and do your cleanup. Minimal down time is your friend. You will have down time, sure, but you can hit your stable rate immediately, while it takes a couple days to hit it with casting. - I acknowledge that previous molds can be cycled as more are made, which does result a steadily accelerating production. Math ahead: If you're only doing 50-100 parts and you can print three per hour, call it ten hours a day interspersed with other tasks. For 100 parts, that's 3-4 days of 3D printing. If you do 8 hours, start of day 5 or a small push at the end of day 4. That absolutely destroys casting up front, where you have 20 at the end of day 2 assuming maximum productivity for 10 hours and and 16 working 8, whereas the 3D printer is sitting at a cool 48 or 60 at end of day 2. Triple the inital productivity. If I were to run the analysis for 8 hours, casting doesn't hit a higher productivity than 3D printing until around day 3 assuming perfect productivity with zero hiccups, zero flaws, and zero cleanup. 0->16->48->112/day, which puts finish on day 4. That assumes several pressure pots that can run in parallel. With one pot and a limit of 6 per mold, it goes 0->16->32>64->96(stable), which puts finish on day 5 slightly later than the printing. If you count opening and sealing a hobby-grade pressure pot it slows down, putting 3D printer clearly in the lead. Doing the math, it's a closer race to 100 than you might think, maybe a day. Since you aren't rushing with the 3D printing and can take a lunch break, answer emails, watch videos, vibe to music, call a friend, go for walks or whatever else without interrupting the process, I'd call it a win for the relatively small quantity of 100. Past that casting is the clear winner, especially if you have multiple pressure pots. If you have a second 3D printer and stagger the prints slightly it absolutely dominates for the model in question.
I removed the waiting time from my calculations. And in my calculations of casting speed I only used one pressure pot because the others were not necessary. I calculated a cycle time of two per hour. In projects where I’m running all seven tanks the rate can go up to thousands a day depending on how many cavities I am casting. Plus, if I am really in a hurry I will use a rubber that cures in a couple hours rather than overnight. On the other hand, if I had a bunch of resin printers then things would equalize out nicely. But as I said in the intro, every project must be calculated separately taking into account your shop equipment and what it is you are making. Everybody I see making money at printing has a farm, not one or two printers.
if you have to clean up a lot of supports, that's going to take up a lot of time, no? do you also not have layer lines even with a resin printer, too? i thought with resin printers you also had to put them under a UV to fully cure?
Would you be kind enough to state about strength and mechanical properties of parts from various processes. NOT everyone is making art-forms. Most people want to cast or 3D print functional parts or parts that carry loads. TO my great frustration load carrying abilities or how strong they are in general is NEVER mentioned in your videos. At least please press or twist them so that we can get some feel for their strength.
All of my experience with resin casting is making decorative objects such as toys. I am not qualified to evaluate the mechanical, structural or chemical properties of any given material. There is a huge variety of materials and their properties vary widely. The best way to learn the properties of a material is to read and understand the material data sheet which should be provided by the manufacturer. Also, contact technical support of the material supplier and ask them which material would be best for your specific use case.
I don't quite agree with your analysis. Yes, after complete set up if you need a 100 yes it is faster, but who needs a 100 of anything? You used 3D printed originals in each of your molds that took time to print and the 3D printer can produce more than the 3 you showed on your platform. Additionally you still need to buy the silicone and wood etc for the molds with resin you buy the resin and print. Not exactly apples to apples.
One of the main reasons I finally decided to get a 3D printer recently is exactly because I want the convenience of being able to create masters from which I can make molds for resin casting. It just makes so much more sense! I'm glad you broke it down so well in this video!
Printing is good for creating masters and prototypes. Casting or injection molding are better for mass production
This is exactly what Games Workshop does for any of the Warhammer nerds hanging out here. They print masters, then create plastic injection molds from those. Masters are usually handed over to marketing, who paint them up to use for promotional materials while the machinery is being made.
Glad to see you back sir. Fridays just aren’t the same with out one of your videos.
Welcome back Bob, great video as always. Take Care, Cheers Jez
Excellent video, I'm a retired patternmaker and this video pointed out the difference between processes very well.
one thing i love about older teachers is they cut straight to the point with no frills. just whack it which a stick lol great vids
I love your estimates on how long it takes to do some task: double it and add 10%. The words of wisdom.
I didn’t make it up. That’s an old rule of thumb used by contractors, fabricators, etc.
This explains all the little mom and pop shops that do miniatures I like to order. I've always wondered how they do large quantities of models for cheap when the quality is usually really good. The Perry brothers come to mind since they're a relatively well-known operation out of the UK. You basically have these two guys and their parents making stuff by hand and shipping it all over world.
I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this information, but it's always helpful to know how things are made (even if you don't use that information right away).
Generally speaking, 3D printing is only viable for very small numbers of parts, and it's really ideal for like, maybe
This Is so helpfull, for now I've been doing casting here and there as a hobby but I would like to start with a small production, I still have a lot to learn tho 😊 your videos are awesome thank you for the effort
Do you sculpt your model or source it from somewhere ?
Can I just say I appreciate your post-print cleaning station. In a similar fashion, I use old screw top ice cream jars for my cleaning station because they seal well when not in use, and I can just throw the whole thing out when the alcohol is spent. The ice cream jars are great because they are clear plastic, so you can seal the container and still see your parts. My grandmother loves that brand of ice cream so I just get the empty containers from her lol I also use them for small parts storage if I'm taking something apart or need to store something for a season.
now i have an excuse to buy some ice cream!
Thanks for another great video, Robert. I’m a lean process manager, so I’m very into time and motion studies. I’m a hobbyist, so I rarely maximize efficiencies in my personal shop, but this has inspired me to do some rudimentary timings of my core tasks.
Great video! Mainly confirming my suspicions. It always aches me to see people produce in inefficient ways. This isn't just limited to printing times, but also to material choices. I know people that design parts with large flat surfaces and print the entire thing, while it's much more beneficial to only print the edges or only print connecting parts while using existing materials for flat surfaces like MDF plate, multiplex, acrylic plate or something similar. This often also adds to the material experience. Back in the days these additional materials were called 'vitamins', but since a couple of years it seems the new order of printing enthusiasts has forgotten the term.
I love that you've taken a variable project, and actually tried yourself instead of just saying "it's variable".
Good job
of course mr youtube algorithm hasnt shown me your channel as soon as you start going into the topic of 3dprinting (as in, 70% of my figure making), can't wait to check out the rest and catch up!
As someone who does casting, as well as Nerf using Out of Darts was a perfect example. A lot of the third party accessory items, kits, or the blaster themselves are painfully expensive and this video accidentally gave a bit of insight as to why that is.
Thanks for mentioning time and motion studies. For my small business, casting is still not an option, the ability to print on demand for small batch orders outweighs the benefits from casting, for now. I will definitely keep casting in mind should my volumes increase, thanks for the tips.
3D printing nachos?!
Thank you for the information. I agree.
Good to see you back . Nothing like a good time and motion video to show the best of both methods. I think with a quick setting resin up to four cycles an hour would be possible . Great vid as usual .
It’s nice to be back, but vacations are nice too! The problem with quicksetting resins is that you often can’t fill the cavities fast enough before the resin begins to set. So it’s a balancing act between how many cavities there are in a given mold and how fast you can fill them. Plus some shapes fill very easily as this one did in this video, others feel slowly because of the inlet sprue, etc.
@@RobertTolone that's what I mean with this mould and a big open pour area . Good to see it was a holiday , last time you went missing in action it wasn't the most pleasant .
I enjoy you making more content related to 3D printing!
Bob, you know better than most, you have to start at the beginning before you can reap the benefits. It all depends how fast you can make the first master. Then it’s a question of production like you said. If you only have one master it will take you forever to complete a job. You’ve showed us time and again to hang the master so that you can maximize your time and your money. If you rely on printing each master over and over, you’ll go broke. If you take that master and gang your production setup, now your cooking. Best regards, Richard
For this video, I focused on the production casting, not the creation of the master because that depends on a different set of factors. Are you faster at hand sculpting or at digital sculpting? For me, it has always been that hand sculpting is faster. Unless the master is something of mechanical design. Then it is easier to design it in CAD. But that is changing. I practice digital sculpting in Blender every day.
Thank you Robert, very good and instructive video.
Thanks for another great video!! Really looking forward to getting into casting soon and very much appreciate how much I learn from these videos.
There is glass-clear silicone but I don’t know if it will works as a mold for uv curing resin.
Fantastic video! Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge!
A lot also depends on the resin printer you have since the time to print is dependant only on model and layer height, not number of pieces so a large print area can in this instance print a lot of pieces at once.
Sure, and if you have 500 3d printers with staff to run them it can produce one every nine seconds!
Or you could just continue to increase the number of cavities you can pour resin in, until you are fully occupied the entire time.
Obviously there are variables at play, but the fundamentals don't change much.
I love all your videos and I learn so much! Thank you!
pros and cons to each. guess 'nuff said on that.
something maybe to keep in mind is what brings you the most satisfaction? most men aren't going to feel very satisfied pushing a button, walking away, and calling that work. casting would be much more hands on, no? with that in mind, there's a certain pride involved. after all, we're builders at heart.
us older guys are probably going to lean more towards casting, that's just our nature having (hopefully) a certain work ethic instilled in us. it's going to feel as if we made something with our hands, not letting a machine do it for us. it's not anti-technology or throwing all efficiency out the window, but if it's in the same ballpark, i think many of us would pick the slightly less money-making process in favor of the one that makes us happier.
3d printing isn't as straight forward as pressing a button and is a skill that needs to be learned lime anything else.
Printing has near 0 setup time - if you already got a 3D model. But if you have to design your model vs sculpting it in reality that is a different story - depending on the material and design creating a real life sculpture can be a lot faster even, reducing the time-benefit of 3D printing.
Another big difference between the 2 is surface-finish and mechanical performance. 3D printing, even with good SLA printers, has a visible surface texture that needs post-processing for every single part. If you use that processed part for creating the mold then the work was only done once but you get the benefit every single time. And then strength - with FDM the strength is abysmal, the SLA it is not bad but you are severely limited by material. And having the same object cast will in general be twice as strong if not more, just cause it lacks the layer-induced anisotropy.
Friend and me made a RC drone and we first printed the body and flight-tested it, then prepared the surface and made some negatives, then tested it to destruction. Didn't take much to destroy it as just cranking up the motors to max exceeded the layer-adhesion and the body started delaminating. With the mold we just added 1 layer of fibreglass and made the shell just half as thick. It was way lighter and sturdier.
3D printing really made prototyping and creating molds waaaayyy easier.
WAlso: hy no blade-guard nor riving-kife?
Hey, listen... I don't wanna be 'UA-cam unfaithful' to my man the CrafsMan, but your name is ALSO my host. These casting videos kick all the ass. The end and I have spoken.
Robert, whenever I do a cup mold, I hold it together by putting it in the same sized cup. I cut the bottom of the cup and use baby powder to help the mold pop in and out easily. It holds the seams together perfectly, with no need for rubber bands.
Smart comparison!
Actually from someone who does both I would have to say resin casting is quicker, Plus there is no need for post cleanup in terms of alcohol washing and curing with a UV light.
Incredibly valuable and practical information, thank you for sharing your expertise
-cheers 🍻
Highball
So first, almost any time you are dealing with scale casting, stamping, injection molding, etc will be faster than 3D printing once you've taken into account tooling time. So there is typically a minumum volume after which casting becomes faster and cheaper. And a time and motion study is a good tool to build sense on determining that. But i have a problem with this video and that is curing time for the mold was ignored in the time to make the mold and that time matters. That 18 hours spent curing is time that could be spent printing parts and it's a constant. And since most 3D slicing software can give you an estimate of print time you can easily do the math on whether it is worth it to do the mold. I get why it was ignored since you can fit the curing into overnight or do other stuff while it is curing. But the same applies to 3D printing especially if you know how to do stacking since you can stack to fill the entire build volume turning it into a 9-14 hour print on something like the mars 2.
GREAT VID....VERY INTERESTING.....COULD YOU DO COST COMPARISON NEXT? PRINTING RESIN vs. CASTING RESIN.....
That was great Robert! You make it look easy, whatever project you are doing! :)
Hi Robert, this is exactly what I was looking for, in my case I have 3d printing business and I have been using my resin printer for print one small product that is just 3cm tall, I can print 60pcs in 2 hours but unfortunately there is a log proccess for the final product because after the wash and cure procces I have to sand them and apply 3 layers of clear coat because these need to have a shiny and smooth surface and them label them, now I'm thinking to make a mold for cast epoxy resin, since if I make the molds with the parts with the clear coat applied I don't will require to apply it if I cast it because the mold with replicate the surface so will be something like pour resin on mold, take them out and label them, a big time safer. Customer have placed orders of 150pcs, just imagine how much time these took me😅
In your case what silicone do you use for the molds? I'm trying to find one that be almost clear because my plan is to use uv epoxy resin so cure time would be faster than normal epoxy resin
Some fast cast resins will cure in 5 minutes.
i have heard that new rubber molds can retain the glossy finish of the part the mold was created for, but over time the rubber molds can become dull. have not tested this myself. just fyi
Love the video am not trying to take anything away from it. However, for most people it's less about the time it takes and more about money it costs
So if you need a video idea, you could figure out the cost (whats cheaper), the effort you need to put in, and tools/skills need to do it well, Although you'd need to put in a lot of work as it is quite a lot of info youd need to gather to make the video so I get if it's to much of a effort as you have a main business n a life to deal with.
Hi Bob. I know the initial resin prints were for the master mold. But the resin printing of that thickness should be hollow. The middle of the model will never be fully cured and will deteriorate over time. Also, a final curing of the model in some sort of UV lightbox, not just a cleaning. Not sure if you covered that in this video.
They were cured in a light box, but hollowing them out makes sense. Thanks.
@@RobertTolone Chitubox has an option to hollow your print. It also saves on resin. Just remember to make a drain hole in the model before you print.
@@RobertTolone The light can't penetrate the outer layers of opaque resin to fully cure the inside on a solid model that size - at least, that's the theory. I'd be keen to see you cut one of those in half on a band saw to see if the inside is still tacky.
Hi Robert!! I find your videos really instructive and fun to watch. I am starting in mold casting and I wonder what is the average lifespan of a silicone rubber mold. How many resin casts can I get from a single mold? Thank you and keep on with this great work! Congratulations!
one issue i have seen is that if you need parts with a glossy finish, new rubber molds will retain that finish, but can become dull over time, long before the mold actually wears out
You are the sweatest creator content there is
Aww, thanks!
Great video Robert!, very interesting see how to combine 3d printing and resin casting, also would be interesant to see comparasion price between two technologies. Thanks!
I buy my casting resin in 5 gallon buckets. The printing resin comes in 1 L bottles. So for me printing resin is much, much more expensive than casting resin.
@@RobertTolone We now have very cheap 3D resin. I'm curious to know the price of casting resin + latex for mold.
Do you find it best to create a 3D printed mold where the box is part of the print or use the cup/box method after printing?
Neat test. Everybody loves 3D printers, but if you need it in bulk, it's far better to cast. And if you need a one off, better to 3D print. That's why I've never understood the 3D printer farms. If you need that many, you might as well cast it, doesn't take that much time investment to do so.
Because you can print on demand. You don't need a physical master to make a mold from. And each printer could be doing a different object. Imagine a client sends you 5 3D model files saying "I need 4 of this, 2 of that, 3 of the other, etc. " You just say OK and start the printers. No time spent making molds for each.
@@3DJapan Sure, and I suppose that happens a lot these days. That would fit in the realm of "one off", and I'm sure there's a lot of business in it. However, when you need tons of prints of the same objects and people go to a printer farm, that specifically is what doesn't make sense and it too happens a lot these days.
Also with FDM and parts designed for FDM process, there's zero labor/postproc. It comes off the bed ready to go.
@@daliasprints9798 If you don't have to remove rafts or supports, then yeah, no post processing, but it'll still be slower than casting even accounting for sprue removal.
Another wonderful video. I’m VERY interested in doing 3D printing as a master and then making slush molds to get as close to a designer vinyl toy as possible with flexible resin. Which resin would you use thy could be tinted any color and also be flexible like soft pvc vinyl?
See the Crafsman’s videos. He does a deep dive into rubbers/resins/silicones that duplicate vintage Star Wars action figure ‘flexibility”.
I don’t cast flexible objects so I have never figured out the combination of materials to use. Elastomers are a whole other universe from resins. What little I have done taught me that there are nice urethane rubbers to work with but they have their own requirements. For instance, they often won’t cure in silicone molds and they are extremely sticky - in fact make an excellent adhesives. You could possibly hollow cast urethane rubber in a solid 3D printed mold but you will need a very effective mold release or barrier coat.
@@davesilva9174 Wow, I’ll have to go back and check. Thanks!
@@RobertTolone Absolutely. If I were back in the US, I’d buy up a bunch and try them out, but here in japan, resins and urethanes are basically a one size fits all type, no real options…
kind of reminds me of the shop i used to own with my then-wife, where we did screenprinting and vinyl. our standard was an order of 20+ shirts would be screenprinted, small order would be done in vinyl. i think that's very analogous, e.g. the 'mass-production' method took up so much more set-up time and a tremendous amount of physical space, but in the end saved time... but, there was more scrap and had very real costs.
i could go on and on, the point being it just depends. how many pulls are you going to get out of your molds, especially if there's finer detail? 12-15? without a printer, you're going to be making many molds to make enough pieces to make into a gang mold. you simply have to know your costs and your times. if you rent work space, that costs per square foot, so you have to justify that, too. but, at one part with your printer farm i'd have to ask, 'what are we doing here?'
Do you take orders for molds? I have designs but no access or experience with this side of production. Would love to be able to make resin models with some of your custom molds!
Nice! What materials are you using? I recently tried resin casting but ran into a huge issue with curing. The silicone I wanted to make the mold out of wouldn't harden around the print. I ended up sealing the print with a generous amount of varnish which helped but the mold was not smooth at all and in some harder-to-varnish areas, still sticky. The silicone was curing 90 minutes but the epoxy resin took almost 2 days and remained flexible on long, slim details
ONE: AWESOME VIDEO AS PER USUAL!!! Just a fun and casual little experiment! Love it!
TWO: I noticed your print has ZERO elephants foot, what's your secret there? Or did you build the model with kind of a buffer for EF?
THREE: I havent finished the video as I'm posting this, but my 3D printer went from my 'main toy' making thing to my "Amazing master-making" thing. Its SO USEFUL to have 3-4 fully detailed masters lying around. Sometimes I'll make 3 masters and spray them with different surfacing like gloss or matte (Matte looks amazing for that 'rubber keshi' style mold, it has that superbly rough look to it as opposed to glossy.) I REALLY thought I'd be making more actual pieces with my printer, but taking the time to make ONE really good master is SO worth it now that I own a pressure pot.
Luck on the elephant’s foot I guess. I’m just using the stock settings in ChiTuBox for the Elegoo Mars 2 printer. Seem to work fine.
My crafting friend and I asked this morning where is Mr Robert an lo here he is :D
Has that Toblerone-Bar always been there in the background? ;D
Very good video.
What about 3D printing the molds? They'd be sturdier than silicone molds and would be perfect for medium runs of about 100 or so.
two part liquid casting resin can stick to things like its welded. you'd have to experiment maybe by using mold release spray
Why you use the pressure pod instead of using vacuum? Best, Steffen
I use both. Vacuum for de-airing the rubber and pressure to suppress bubble formation in the resin.
Thank you very much Robert…
Sure, but how many castings can you do before the mold breaks down?
what, maybe 12-15 i'm guessing? especially if there's finer detail.
2:18 - Me: Ha ha, he said whack them with a stick, I love Robert's sense of humor. (Two seconds later) I can't believe he actually whacked them with a stick! LOL
Works like a champ! (Unless your print is very fragile!)
Engineers have used that technique and variations of it forever!
@@RobertTolone Consider getting a WhamBam flex plate. It's a flexible magnetic sheet that sticks your build plate. It saves you from having to take the build plate off the printer-- you just take the plate off, then bend the plate to pop the models off. A small investment, and it saved me from accidentally chipping models removing them from the printer and I never have to re-level the build plate. Highly recommend! LOVE these videos as I'm currently doing a lot of this stuff myself. No doubt casting is quicker, but I'd argue for my sake, the learning curve is higher and costly (materials spent) when learning how to properly cast. Your channel has been a great aid along the way though!
@@eric3dee 👍 I’ll look into the flex plate.
Hi Mr. Tolone, is that alochol you are using Ethilic alcohol or is it isopropilic?, thank you.
Iso
Could you do a video about pvc rubber if you use it? Not many videos about it, and don’t know if u can make products with it without a large machine
I have no experience with it. It seems to be limited to extrusion or injection molding machines. Way more industrial than my shop.
Lots of people make money with printing, especially resin printing. Remember that they make bigger printers and you could fit 10 models on the plate that take the same amount of time as one.
Yes, the more machines and bed space capacity you have the more the calculus changes.
IMO you can't compare this,
first of all, resin pri!nter need always the same time, wether you are printing one or many copies.
second the Elegoo Mars is not the first choice if you want produce small series, compare that to a Elegoo Jupiter which has a four times bigger bedsize (6" to 12" ), in your example you could print 12-15 copies on the Jupiter in one hour.
third resin prints are in most cases hollowed out, to save resin and improve curing speed, which should be much faster than the curing of cast resin and
last but not least, more complex parts with undercuts, holes, etc. are much more difficult, if you want to make a mold for them.
So in general casting in molds can be the better solution for bigger parts with a geometry that fit the process, but for smaller and more complex parts, resin printing is the better way.
And don't forget, that a mold doesn't last forever, so depending on the number of copies, you have to make new molds. So, as a fan of MSLA printing I only need the printer, a curingstation and the resin, i don't need to have materials for mold construction, i don't need a vacuumchamber.
BUT if i want a modell with a perfect surface (no layerlines), mold casting is the only way.
It's almost like he should have said the right answer depends on the specifics of the job...
oh wait, he did.
@@Skoozi you are right, but my point is, that you don't choose the smalest printer for serial production, but there is no limit for the moldsize, thats why it isn't comparable. If you take the model from the video, but choose a bigger printer, you can be as fast as mold casting, but with less work, less resin. On the Elegoo Jupiter you can produce a hundred copies in eight hours too.
@@ChristofVorhauer but the actual quoted times were a mold with 3 cavities which was directly comparable to a printbed that could hold 3 prints simultaneously
on a practical level, most of your printed pieces are going to need supports, though, and that can be a lot of time spent cleaning the piece up. plus, if we're talking about a resin printer, there's nowhere near as much flexibility in terms of material. i mean, if you want something other than a hard, brittler plastic, you're s.o.l. on a resin printer, no?
pros and cons to each.
A concept that I struggle to get people to understand... 3D printing is for "rapid prototyping". It's OK as a hobbyist if you're doing one-offs, but it isn't a production machine; not by itself. Casting is for production. A single 3D printer has a looooooong way to go if it wants to keep pace with casting. Something like injection molding machines can crank out 100s or even 1000s of castings an hour depending on the part.
that's why printing farms exist. while it does make sense on paper to add casting, doing that is a whole other thing. it's a huge pain in the ass to add a new process. too, these print farms are undoubtedly making ABS products, which you can't cast.
Who says it's for rapid prototyping? I sell my prints all the time either to clients or on Etsy. With a large print bed you can make a lot of models in the same amount of time that it takes for one. Add a second printer and you double that. Oh and injection molding isn't resin casting.
@@3DJapan i think he was using that as an example of production rates.
on a more 'practical'-ish level, if you've got the dinero and don't need a single large size, you can always invest in a benchtop injection mold press. once dialed in, you should be able to pop a piece out about every 40 seconds or so from what i've seen in videos.
there's is going to be a time in production when casting is just rather going to blow printing out of the water assuming you've got several pieces of equipment, like loaded up on pressure pots. he mentioned he's got seven and sometimes uses a faster cure silicone that can make a mold in a couple of hours. using gang molds and it's unlikely a couple of printers are going to be able to hang after a thousand pieces.
aside from the satisfaction of making something by casting because we're men and it's our nature to build stuff, casting's big advantage is also the variety of materials you can use. resin printing gives you a resin product, a hard plastic that's more on the brittle side. while you obviously can't cast ABS, there are products where you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference on a practical level.
pros and cons.
why are you still doing etsy, though? they take most of your money, i don't get why people are still on that rip-off site and i never did buy that 'exposure' thing they claim is their big feature.
Hi,
One Question thats always in my mind: When you use a Papercup as Moldbox. WHY not place the Mould in one Cup for Resincasting? You can forget about the Rubberbands? The Cup holds the siliconemould perfectly in shape.
Thanks.
Because, as strange as it sounds, cups are not identical- even from the same package. I have discovered there are slight variations that can result in open parting lines on the mold. Inside the cup I have no way of massaging the mold into a tight fit. With rubber bands I can adjust the strength and position of the closing pressure. Also, casting resin produces heat and the mold expands slightly. That means it no longer fits into the cup even if it did when the mold was cold.
@@RobertTolone Thanks for taken Time to answer me. I have some of your favorite moulds (two part clay moulds ;-) ) I keep them in the rectangular box. put the second part on it like a lid/cover and have no problems with castings. but never tried with cups. Thanks
Would it be possible to 3D print a mold to be used for resin casting?
I think Robert has recently done a video on this exact subject. Might be worth looking at that one too.
great content, very helpful!
which one do you think produce more detailed product, resin casting or 3D printing?
assuming i made the molding silicone with 3d printed master
Much more detail in a resin casting. The resolution of current 3d printers is low compared to resin casting which can reproduce microscopic detail.
great Video :)
Just curious, would an FDM printed item. printed at 20% infill collapse in a pressure pot?
It could collapse or be infused with rubber. It might not, but the risk is there.
I wonder how detailed you can get with a casting mold. On a Resin 3D printer you can get quite detailed. And do you print your models with a hole in the bottom, recommended to drain out any uncured resin when Printing. This is also 1 thing you don't have to do in Resin mold casting.
I would use drain hole where needed on hollow parts.
I’ve been looking into creating molds out of my 3D prints but I keep reading about cure inhibition. Apparently platinum silicone doesn’t like resin 3D prints. I was curious to which kind of silicone you used or how to prevent cure inhibition from happening.
I use tin-based silicone from www.silpak.com: EconoSil-25. It’s the most inexpensive one.
I don't have much experience with casting so maybe this is something obvious I'm missing, but is there a reason you don't print the negative/mold directly rather than having to do that step manually?
You can print molds. I have done that in an earlier video. Right now I am experimenting with printing molds using flexible resin.
Robert, is the resin that is used in a RESIN 3D PRINTER the same as the resin that you pour into a mold ?.. buying some products from SMOOTH ON , i was shocked at how expensive that they are and i am hoping for a cost effective resin to pour into the molds i want to make.. Just wondering what else i could use.
They are not the same.
3d printing resins cure by exposed to UV light. Casting resins are 2-part systems that cure by mixing the A and B components together. The mix ratio is usually 50-50 but not always. The manufacturer will specify the proper mix ratio for the resin. When mixed, the resin has a certain amount of open time before it begins to cure. It also has a time it requires to harden enough to be removed from the mold.
Resin is expensive. Larger quantities cost much less per gram than small quantities. That is why I buy my resins in 5 gallon buckets. But for most hobbyist that is not practical.
@@RobertTolone You are so helpful to all of us hobbyist, You always answer everyones questions... Thank you.. YOU ROCK..
@@RobertTolone Have you ever tried using FINE CEMENT as your casting material.. would that work without harming the silicone mold.. it would be so much cheaper to use CEMENT over the expensive resin.. you can buy it without rocks added as a FINE POWDER... and just add water.
I recently got some silicone rubber specifically for making 3d printed molds, but one of the first things in the instructions was a mention of curing inhibition when using UV resins (which wasn't mentioned on the product page...). My own experiments with this have shown that my resin *is* problematic. I've found that I can improve it with soaking the print in alcohol for a few hours, but it's still not perfect.
Do you have any suggestions for dealing with this? Do you know if the silicone you used is specifically compatible?
I always use tin-based rubber when molding 3-D printed objects.
@@RobertTolone Are there any food safe tin silicones?
@@mredig Possibly, but I don’t know of any.
Cheated time on casting three. Exclusive use of three cast models in the casting box would have been truer.
By using the printer resin prints for casting, you shorted the casting time considerably
I accounted for that time in my calculations. That’s why it took me an hour to cast one and an hour and a half to cast three.
@@RobertTolone have a great weekend Robert
With Resin printing you should have made 3 prints in 1.5hrs not just one print. This is the difference between FDM 3D printing and Resin printing. With Resin printing Each layer cures the whole build plate in one pass. So the more you can put on the build plate the better. In FDM Filament printing You have to print one Model at a time. Taking 3x as long. So far it is neck n neck in the race.
Sweet
Printing and casting arent opponents, they're complementary. You can use a printer to make the masters, then cast those, best of both worlds. That said, there are shapes a printer can do that you cant cast.
He said that right at the beginning of the video. Not as directly as that, but he addressed it.
There is also a wider selection of materials and resins that can be cast than printed
I love them both and agree they are complimentary. I also think that at the rate 3-D printing is progressing it won’t be long before resin casting will only be used by sculptors who prefer to work by hand. Even then, the day 3-D scanning and printing reaches the speed of flat scanning and printing it’s game over for silicone molds and resin casting.
@@RobertTolone i've got 7 3d printers and am well and truly into the hobby, but i've been watching your channel to learn casting. Like you pointed out, you can cast a whole load of a part way faster than printing. Especially for larger parts.
Would Legos work instead of using wood?
I think the results on recasting resin are more detailed from what i see this far 🤔
5:35 - Hey, I'm no mathemagician - but best I can figure, something doesn't add up here. Heh.
If you don’t find any math mistakes in my work, be very surprised.
Yeah, resin casting is definitely faster and more economical when it comes to mass production. The main strength of 3D printing is the ability to print any model on demand.
Hay, nice vid, and if you don't wont that printer you got, you can sand it my way.( just a guy that wants to get into 3d printing but can not afford)
You are saying that it takes the same time to cast x amount as print one. However this is an SLA set up. So it's actually the same as 3, the max you can fit on the bed. Unlike a fdm printer, it works on layer time and not nozzle workload. So not a huge difference but incorrect all the same
in my calculations I allowed for how many pieces you could gang onto a print bed. Obviously, if you had a much larger printer, or a print farm, you could print them faster.
@@RobertTolone you fitted 3 on the bed when printing, but used just 1 printed when comparing to cast.
What about toxicity for food related parts? Pretty sure resin is a no-go
Pretty much. I use food-grade silicone and seal the masters in a fine coat of pure melted beeswax.
I think you forgot one important factor: MONEY 💰💰💰
What is the total cost of the two process?
If you only run a small batch, the casting will be too expensive and not as efficient.
I'm curious to know about that.
And with resin printer, if you have a large one (Jupiter I think?) and or many printer, you might be more efficient and cheaper compare to molding, isn't?
No one manufacturing method is better than an other one. I have seen a video where somebody really claims 3D printing will replace injection molding lol....ridiculous.
Everything has it´s pro and con. 3D printing is still rapid prototyping, that´s what´s it´s there for.
The big advantage to 3D printing in this use case is, if you automate the process you can print over night, it´s hard to automate this casting process here. And you can increase the amount of printers, those are cheap compared to labor.
to this day 3D printing excells in prototyping, not mass manufacturining of the same parts
So I guess the takeaway is to prototype with a 3D printer but manufacturer with castings.
cool granpa
If you're good on printers, some of us have 0.....wink wink, lol.
in my (admittedly limited) experience 3D resin and FDM printers may not be the best choices when making parts that have thin, flat surfaces. the warping issues are incredibly time consuming and frustrating. definitely not something you want to deal with in a production environment. also the dimpling from removed supports, especially on flat surfaces
Kinda true but not entirely correct.
As someone that does both printing and casting, you neglected that it is EXTREMELY easy to make a mold with a 3d printer rather than make a mold with silicone rubber. There is software where you drop the finished piece into a 'block' and then subtract the model from the block, you can then (in model space) cut the block in half and you then have a mold that you can cast.
If you still want a 'soft' mold, you can just add flexible resin into the cast print.
Once thats done, you spray the release agent onto the print, pour in your resin a remove when cured, repeat.
I don't think the preparation stages should be calculated into all this. Sure you need to make a mold first for the casting way... but you don't start building the 3d printer at the start of the project now do you. Everything ready to go, pouring VS clicking the print button, head to head, that's the fair way.
Whacking them with the stick is painful to watch. Get a flexible build plate, no risk of damaging them.
Definitely not recommended for fragile prints but this case there was no danger of breaking them!
3D printing is great as a hobby but after 5 years of using an FDM printer I see no way to actually make $$ with one. As you said an average small print is over an hour, some of my prints have taken 5 days. In the end if you leave them in the sun PLA will melt lol
Since this is meant to be an apples to apples comparison, there are some issues with this analysis:
- When doing a production cast, don't you normally only get a single model to work from? Using the first few 3D prints past the first feels a little cheaty and biased.
- The time for silicone to cure should be counted in the time expenditure. This is production. That down time matters. It's 24 hours, not 1 or 2. As you gang more and more parts, the cut time multiplies. That counts.
- Related to the first, the down time was counted for the 3D prints, but not the molds. More bias.
- You can cycle 3D prints constantly. Pull the prints, dump them into your alcohol bath, top off the printer if needed, run another print and do your cleanup. Minimal down time is your friend. You will have down time, sure, but you can hit your stable rate immediately, while it takes a couple days to hit it with casting.
- I acknowledge that previous molds can be cycled as more are made, which does result a steadily accelerating production.
Math ahead:
If you're only doing 50-100 parts and you can print three per hour, call it ten hours a day interspersed with other tasks. For 100 parts, that's 3-4 days of 3D printing. If you do 8 hours, start of day 5 or a small push at the end of day 4. That absolutely destroys casting up front, where you have 20 at the end of day 2 assuming maximum productivity for 10 hours and and 16 working 8, whereas the 3D printer is sitting at a cool 48 or 60 at end of day 2. Triple the inital productivity.
If I were to run the analysis for 8 hours, casting doesn't hit a higher productivity than 3D printing until around day 3 assuming perfect productivity with zero hiccups, zero flaws, and zero cleanup. 0->16->48->112/day, which puts finish on day 4. That assumes several pressure pots that can run in parallel. With one pot and a limit of 6 per mold, it goes 0->16->32>64->96(stable), which puts finish on day 5 slightly later than the printing. If you count opening and sealing a hobby-grade pressure pot it slows down, putting 3D printer clearly in the lead.
Doing the math, it's a closer race to 100 than you might think, maybe a day. Since you aren't rushing with the 3D printing and can take a lunch break, answer emails, watch videos, vibe to music, call a friend, go for walks or whatever else without interrupting the process, I'd call it a win for the relatively small quantity of 100. Past that casting is the clear winner, especially if you have multiple pressure pots.
If you have a second 3D printer and stagger the prints slightly it absolutely dominates for the model in question.
I removed the waiting time from my calculations. And in my calculations of casting speed I only used one pressure pot because the others were not necessary. I calculated a cycle time of two per hour. In projects where I’m running all seven tanks the rate can go up to thousands a day depending on how many cavities I am casting. Plus, if I am really in a hurry I will use a rubber that cures in a couple hours rather than overnight. On the other hand, if I had a bunch of resin printers then things would equalize out nicely. But as I said in the intro, every project must be calculated separately taking into account your shop equipment and what it is you are making. Everybody I see making money at printing has a farm, not one or two printers.
@@RobertTolone I understand. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
if you have to clean up a lot of supports, that's going to take up a lot of time, no? do you also not have layer lines even with a resin printer, too? i thought with resin printers you also had to put them under a UV to fully cure?
Would you be kind enough to state about strength and mechanical properties of parts from various processes. NOT everyone is making art-forms. Most people want to cast or 3D print functional parts or parts that carry loads. TO my great frustration load carrying abilities or how strong they are in general is NEVER mentioned in your videos. At least please press or twist them so that we can get some feel for their strength.
All of my experience with resin casting is making decorative objects such as toys. I am not qualified to evaluate the mechanical, structural or chemical properties of any given material.
There is a huge variety of materials and their properties vary widely.
The best way to learn the properties of a material is to read and understand the material data sheet which should be provided by the manufacturer.
Also, contact technical support of the material supplier and ask them which material would be best for your specific use case.
3D printing wasn't really intended for mass production.
I don't quite agree with your analysis. Yes, after complete set up if you need a 100 yes it is faster, but who needs a 100 of anything? You used 3D printed originals in each of your molds that took time to print and the 3D printer can produce more than the 3 you showed on your platform. Additionally you still need to buy the silicone and wood etc for the molds with resin you buy the resin and print. Not exactly apples to apples.
slap! :)
try water washable resin
very nice
how about a 3d printed direct mold
I guess they are similar speeds after you have made the molds, and similar speed to make the mold
try cement cast in 3d printed molds
Having to cut the supports off of the same model over and over is pretty mundane.
I agree, very mundane!