I read a plug by a company selling Teflon/glass sheet for mold making. They claim you don’t need release agent. It got me thinking, has anyone ever tried coating an aluminum mold with Teflon to make a no maintenance mold? The process for coating pots and pans is fairly simple so it should work. There shouldn’t be any need to apply anything else for the life of the mold or am I missing something?
The Teflon sheets with adhesive backing work great for release just don’t try to remove it cause it’s a PIA. They release just as good as Semi-perm. So I “assume” if you were to get the mold coated it would work just as well. With the sheets there is no maintenance needed, just demold and layup again…
We use teflon self adhesive sheet to line our carbon fibre moulds. Our moulds have an area of 10m2 and cycle through the autoclave up to 4 times a day. If we used a mould release we would go through a massive amount at great cost, but then the sheet is not cheap. Also it means that I don’t have to worry about the guys forgetting to reapply the release. We have found that after about 40 cooks the teflon starts to break down and as Rotorage said it’s a pain to remove.
We sourced some from China that was cheaper and now tend to use it on nearly every flat mould surface, I even covered a table top I use to assemble parts on to help with cleaning.
Any link to that supplier?
Thanks.
A link to a source in EU would be great. How well does the sheeting conform to complex shapes?
The sheet we use is almost impossible to get on complex curves without having to cut it into many smaller parts, but for what we need it for that’s not a real problem.
I’d need to check on Monday as to the exact place but I know we found them on Alibaba.com