Building A Mold For A 2010 Camaro. ---> Lots O Pics!

General Composites Discussions Composites Talk
#1

So my partner, (business partner… Not that theres anything wrong with that.) And I are making a mold for the radiator cover of the 5th generation Camaro. I’m documenting this here to share our work and hope some of you can input some words of wisdom since we are aiming to make a perfect mold. Most of our molds before were just, “good enough” but since this will be a difficult product to sand and polish. We are looking to make the mold perfect to minimize post work.

We are starting it by filling all the holes and negative areas on the part by attaching the part to a 4ft x 2 ft piece of Formica board. We will the fill in the gaps with joint compound and sabdable putty. Once that is finished we will be priming the plug with Duratecs 707-002 gray surface primer. Once that us is cured we plan to wet sand, buff, and polish the entire plug.

After that is done we will be trying something new, and here is where you guys come in handy. We were told to clean then degrease the plug, wipe on several coats of chemlease #15 sealer, let sit, then wax the plug several times with Rexco’s mold release wax.

After that can we skip pva and go straight to gel coat? I’ve been a sissy the past 5 years and never wanted to skip pva because I’m always scared that the resin over the mold, (or plug in this case.) Would lock in and destroy both parts.

Now I’m aware that the chemlease #15 is a sealer but is it classified as a semi perm release agent? Or only a sealer?

I ask all this because we want a glass like mold surface with out having to go through hours of wet sanding, huffing, and polishing… I realize sometimes that’s the case, but idea seen many people make molds on YouTube with out pva and they come out beautiful.

Lastly, I’m using a red tooling gel coat as the coating and then it will be reinforced with 8 layers of 1.5 oz chopped strand matt. The resin ill be using will be an isophthalic PE tooling resin with a HTD of 210. Do I need to post cure that or can it be cured at room temp or a slightly elevated temp. Maybe 100f. I usually just let the mold sit.

Here are pictures of the progress thus far.

#2

Sorry I forgot to post pictures…


We first filled in the holes and did a little simple body work on the high spots.


We then filled in the voids with some putty.

More pics tomorrow :).


Also, this is the surfacing primer we will be using to go over the plug after all the body work is complete.


Here is the wax we will be using once the primer is sanded, polished, and sealed.


And here is the sealer. Is this sealer a semi perm release agent? Will it help improve separation between the plug and the mold or the mold and the part? If I use this, then wax it very well, will I still need to use PVA?

I hope I can get some opinions here :).

#3

Any help on weather or not I can skip pva to get a perfect finish on the mold?

#4

so, you’ll be using a primer, then the sealer, then the wax?
The sealer is for use under a semiperm, I can’t tell the effects when used under wax. It’s not a stand alone release agent.

Duratec, no experience with that, but I hear a lot from it over here. if it’s polishable to a high gloss, and doesn’t react to PE, why would you use PVA? wax works perfect, and I never had good quality surface using wax and PVA. PVA alone is better, Wax alone is best in most cases. (or in production- semi perm. faster, lasts longer…)

and, when in doubt, do a test. just a simple plate or something. saved me a couple of times!

#5

Ahh thx for the post! I’ll try a test and report back with pictures. The place we go to, to purchase materials sell freekote but that stuff is very e,pensive and we are already flying past our budget for materials. Hopefully the sealer and the eX does it. If not maybe they can swing us a few ounces of the semi perm.

#6

I find a semipermanent release is cheaper than others. It’s faster to apply, and only needs a new coat or two after every 10 to 15 products you pull.
The one I use does leave some stripes though, so for pulling moulds from a plug I use wax.

#7

Ahh thanks :). We are heading down to Joe’s Fiberglass, Auto, and Marine later today to ask dome questions and pick up a few things. I’ll update when we get back. I’ll also post a few more pics in a couple of minutes.

#8


Time to us the primer :).


The plug after all the body work and sanding.


After the first to coats of primer.


After the second two coats of prime.

Next, we sand and buff. Is it ok to wet sand this?

#9

DT 707 wet sands nicely, good product to work with, plug is coming along nicely

#10

Thanks SLS! We started wet sanding earlier tonight. We did the part with 1000 and we will go over it with 1500 and then 2000 before buffing. The flange we started with 600. We’ll then go over it with 1000, 1500, and then 2000.

We quit around 12AM because there’s lots more sanding to do. The surfacing primer seems to clog the paper easily. And yes, the plug is fully cured lol.

We’ll finish the sanding tomorrow, then begin the molding process.

Thanks!

#11

#12

Wow!! Why suffering with spraying primer, then sanding etc etc.I believe you didn’t have to primer it, you dont have a foam plug which needs leveling, you could easily level the bondo, mold it and then sand the mold’s gelcoat and buff to a mirror shine.That’s what I would do. Also don’t forget that primer adds material and thickness to the plug.

#13

You make a good point as far as adding thickness to the plug, however; the OEM part does not have to be precise to the mm. Its esentislly a bracket that holds the bumper in place.

Also, the reason we primed the plug is because the filling was made out of plaster. PVA would be soaked into the plaster and the gel coat would stick to the plaster and possibly raw metal. It’s not a risk I was willing to take. We want as litte post wok as possible :).

#14

Wen your using oem parts and adding primer your not working in mm your workin in microns all will be fine :slight_smile: dnt forget when sanding you also remove micron

Keep going

#15

Thanks Brainstorm! I’ll be uploading more photos tonight. I’ve been putting on a few coats of wax each night for the past three nights. I’ll be gel coating tomorrow. My only question is should I pva first or go straight to geo coat. And will the gel coat fish eye over the heavily waxed surface? I put 5 coats of sealer and so far am on 10 coats of wax. I want to make sure the part seperates well, but I also want a mirror like finish.

#16

If your part is not mirror finish by now, it will never be.

Please leave the PVA. A wax alone should be more than enough to get the thing out. Will you be using polyester tooling gelcoat, and a low-shrink (aka low profile) resin? For the best results, you should.

#17

Sorry for not loading up pics. We will be using a PE tooling gel coat and saturating the fiberglass matte and cloth with PE isopthalic resin. I’ll be backing the mold up with 8 layers of 1.5oz matting and then two or three layers of viscosity cloth. The mold will then be reinforced with 1" piping.

I’ll most likely have to polish the mold some more in order to have it shine.

#18

Sorry for the delay in pics!

These pictures are of the plug sealed and waxed.

What sucks is that the edges of the composite board soaked up some moisture and now are swollen. I waited a few days to see if it woudl go down, and it didn’t… I’ll just have to make the flange smaller which is alright I guess. I don’t want to add material to the mold itself to fix the lip. I just want to be able to buff and polish at the very most. Maybe some minor wet sanding…

#19

Earlier today we waxed the mold once more, and then brushed don tooling gel coat. The picture below shows one layer of tooling gel coat, but I added two more after that.

#20

So today we laid the fiberglass to the mold. Here are the pictures so far…

We started by adding four layers of 1.5 oz chopped strand matt with isophthalic tooling resin. After that we added two layers of 2oz biaxle fiberglass cloth with .5oz chopped strand backing. Then we covered the entire mold with two more layers of 1.5 oz mattng.

Tomorrow we will demoled, trim, and reinforce the ,mold with metal tubing.

I hope it releases well :).