Hi everyone, welcome to part 2 of making
a cosplay helmet with materials from
Smooth-On incorporated. We're going to
get into casting right now so let's get
right to it. Now for today's casting
material we're going to be using
Smooth-Cast 57D, this is part A and this is part B.
Smooth-Cast 57D is a translucent,
semi-rigid plastic. We're going to begin
by pre-mixing Part B. I do it by giving the container
a good shake.  Now we're going to dispense a
small amount of Smooth-Cast 57D part B
into a clean cup. Now Smooth-Cast 57D is
a translucent white material. It can be
easily colored and i'm going to use UVO
black to give this translucent resin
system a solid black color that only
takes a few drops of material to
accomplish this.
I'm going to mix the coloring into Part
B and keep stirring the material until I
get a nice uniform color. Now we're going
to do the same thing for a part A.
We're going to pre-mix the material by
giving the container a thorough shake
and then we're going to dispense a small
amount of material into a clean cup. Now
the mix ratio for Smooth-Cast 57D is 1 to
1 by volume. Now I'm going to combine the
Part A with the Part B, now remember once
part A and part B touch, the pot
life begins. The pot life for
Smooth-Cast 57D is three minutes. I'm going to
give this mixture a thorough stir
scraping the sides and the bottom as I
do this and once i get a nice thorough
mixture of the material i'm going to
take a clean cup and I'm going to pour
this mixture into a clean cup and repeat
the process. This will ensure that I get
a thorough mix of material.
Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take this resin material and I'm
actually going to brush it into the mold
cavity. Now traditionally this is where
people will use a rotocast technique
where they hand roto or hand rotate the
mold rubber to create a hollow casting.
I like to brush the resin in ice mix up a
small amount of material at a time and
brush the resin into the cavity, this
allows me ultimately to control how much
resin material I'm going to be using
within the mold cavity and where it's
going to flow. I find that this
method really gives me a nice efficient
way of providing an uniform coating
within the mold cavity. Once that initial
layer starts to tack up I rotate the
mold and repeat the process. This
again is something that I like
to do for making hollow casts because it
gives me ultimate control with respect
to how much material i'm going to be
using within my mold cavity and how
efficiently to spread that resin system
within the mold I will repeat this
process several times rotating the mold
as the layer becomes tacky and
repeating that process over and over
again to achieve the thickness that I'm
looking for in my castings. Typically
I'll do this about four to eight times
to create a hollow cast.
Once the resin is fully cured it's then
time to de-mold our casting from our
mold assembly Smooth-Cast 57D has an
ultimate cure time of about 30 minutes,
so you can easily get a hollow
casting done in a relatively short
amount of time. Now once we've gotten the
shell removed from our assembly we're
again going to take some baby powder
and we're going to coat the surface of
our mold rubber to relieve the surface
tension of the rubber and allow for the
silicone to slide against itself as we
demold the glove mold from our casting.
Now when you do this again take your
time, roll the silicone carefully back
from the base of the model and invert
for mold as you remove the casting from
the mold cavity.
So as you can see the Dragon Skin mold
captured all of the detail perfectly
from our original model and now it's
ready for painting and finishing.
Here now is our finished helmet Smooth-Cast 57D
takes paint beautifully. For this
technique I just applied a dry brush of
acrylic paint. Now the reason I chose
57D is for its impact resistance.
Check this out.
(helmet banging down stairs)
And here's the helmet. Scratches, nothing.
Cracks, nothing. Amazing, amazing, amazing.
This material is fantastic. I love it.
