Alright! The very first thing you need when making dice are molds these will hold the shape of your dice as empty space so you can fill the void with material that will eventually harden the molds are made of silicone which allow easy release of these materials. You can use polyurethane plastics epoxy resin or anything that starts off in a liquid form and solidifies to a hard surface These molds all have reservoirs to hold extra material and are intended for use in pressure pots Pressure pots can be filled with and then maintain pressurized air As the pressure increases any bubbles trapped in the material are reduced to a negligible size making them virtually invisible to the naked eye We'll need extra material to replace the space left behind by the bubbles or else we get dice like this to make molds you'll need a set of masters dice this is the shape you want your dice to have, not only their geometry but also the depth and font of their numbers you can 3d print them and sand them down to your preferred smoothness or you can get someone else to do it! Not everyone has a 3d printer readily available Or has the time and space to use it in their homes I suggest contacting other dice makers to see if you can purchase a set of their masters or if you can get them to print your set, using files that you made yourself In the description, I'll link a video by Cly Faker who explains how to design your own set using blender Which, by the way is a completely free program Now, this set would also have some way to produce the shape of the sprues you can drill a hole and use a toothpick I've just 3d printed my own sprues with matching holes in the masters Next you'll want some pourable silicon I'll be using mold star 30 from the company Smooth On But again, you can use anything that starts off as a liquid And then solidifies to give an elastic surface which doesn't bind to the materials you use to make dice. You need to take note of its shore strength for silicones, it shows how easy it is to deform the mold. there are different scales to shore strength the one we are primarily concerned with is the A scale we usually use this for rubbers with the mold star series the number in its name shows its shore strength if it's too low the silicone will be too fragile if it's too high it'll be too difficult to remove the dice from the mold finally you'll need some way to mix and pour that silicone as well as some sort of vessel to hold it as it cures I do however recommend some extra equipment like a vacuum chamber and a mold release agent depending on the type and quality of your molds speaking of the first type of mold we have are the regular sprue molds a sprue is just something that we can use to inject material into the mold again this has the added benefit of holding extra material so that bubbles do not form in our dice these little guys make one dice each so that means 7 of them will be needed for a set compared to the other molds, they don't need as much equipment they don't take as long to make and they use much less silicone you can damage your masters when making sprue molds like this lot's of dice making techniques also need a wide surface to work with this makes things like two colored dice basically impossible for this type of mold any raised corner present within the mold could guarantee large bubbles this means, even with pressure pots, you're left with dice like this now, even if you do get the mold perfect you could still have slipping on each flap of the mold if you cut straight lines on the mold, like I have then you can get dice like this I've seen sprue molds with wavy cuts which could stop that issue however, I have never tried that method Instead, I had used these the sprue cap mold hybrids it's called that because it have two parts one part which caps the other with this we can use a lot of techniques that are otherwise unavailable with a regular sprue mold while maintaining its benefit of having consistently clear dice again due to its reservoir of material we also lose any chance of bubbles forming on raised corners because with this method all of the uppermost faces lie flat this design, however, has a huge flaw it does not stop the material from flowing out the sides since liquid flows from the highest point down all the extra material we have in our reservoirs just empties out the sides if it flows out fast enough we won't have any material left to fill in the voids left by the compressed bubbles in our pressure pot you can actually see that here where there is a lot of overflowed resin you can tell that in its liquid form the resin has flowed out the sides and solidified into these streams of resin this leads to the final improvement a barrier to prevent the resin from flowing out the sides I call this the walled sprue cap mold hybrid the material cannot escape meaning that we have all the benefits of the previous mold type without any of its flaws as long as you completely fill the mold and its reservoir there is no way for a bubble to form on your dice you can build your wall into the mold, like I have you can also use tape or the vessel you used for the mold as the wall itself a built in wall is guaranteed to have no leaks while a separate wall can have leaks, especially as the mold shrinks over time alright! Now to actually make them I will only show the methods in making the regular sprue mold and the walled cap mold one because I don't have enough silicone for all three types and two, I want to showcase the various techniques and changes I've made to the regular mold making process if you want to see a method for making sprue cap mold hybrids then I have linked a video from Geek Happens the setup for sprue molds is easy you fix your dice to your sprue and your sprue to your vessel here the connect between the sprue and the dice is tight enough to fix them together and I'll just use some superglue to fix my sprue to the vessel which is just this plastic shot glass the setup for a walled cap mold is much more involved you'll need a smaller platform and a larger container here I had laser cut a small box to fit within a larger box now, you don't have to do this you can fashion this from cardboard or use plastic containers you have lying around just note that you may have to disassemble the larger container to free the mold you'll also need a thin adhesive to fix the dice to the platform I have this double sided tape which I'll use to stick the sprue face to the platform for each dice I first cut out a matching piece of adhesive then I'll remove the cover using tweezers and lastly I'll position and stick them onto the platform now that you have everything prepped and ready it would be a good time to use some sort of mold release to ensure that your dice do not bond to the silicone as it cures here, I'm using ease release 200 it's a product that prevents bonding between plastics and silicone we'll also be using this later to prevent our cap from sticking to our mold as it conveniently prevents bonding between two layers of silicone as well now, whenever you are working with aerosols it's always good to have some sort of protection not only do we have this gas mask but also we'll be doing this in a well ventilated area following the instructions we first apply a heavy layer of ease release 200 to all sides of our dice notice how I'm rotating the mold each and every time I spray this step is not really necessary however, I severely recommend you do this because it drastically increases the chance of a successful mold now the next step is to lightly tap each and every surface with a soft bristled brush my guess is that this allows extra layers of ease release to apply more readily I don't do this with the sprue mold that's because its too narrow for my brush to reach now all we have to do is apply a light coating and allow to dry for 10 minutes within that 10 minutes we can start mixing our silicone with mold star, make sure to mix it adequately scraping the sides and bottom to ensure the right ratio of the two parts here it's 1:1 by weight or volume you need to be wary of the pot life of your silicone this is the time when you can mix, degas and pour anything past that and the reaction between the two parts means that the silicone is too viscous to work with with the silicone that we have our pot life is 45 minutes we mix the silicone for 5 minutes and allow it to degas in the vacuum chamber for 10 minutes this is to get rid of bubbles again, this helps to create a consistently successful mold if you don't have a vacuum chamber, just pour as slowly as possible and as high as possible this helps to squeeze out any bubbles that might appear on the surfaces of your molds which could appear on your dice when you come to make them we need to wait as long as the recommended cure time for our silicone that is 6 hours by this time the molds are strong enough to remove from their containers for your first time making a mold I recommend waiting an excess of 24 hours this way you can be sure that your silicone has cured once you know what fully cured silicone feels like you won't have to keep track of time for the regular sprue version we can free the sprue and the dice by running an exacto knife along the edge try to do it in long and smooth motions pull apart each flap of the mold to maintain tension making the cutting easier this process can make little scratches on your masters you will definitely improve over time but these scratches make you have to re-sand your masters if you want to use them in other molds you'll need to make two cuts in order to free the dice try to cut as little as possible the more you cut the more flaws there may be in your mold now here you can actually see the cuts that I have made across the face of my masters dice again, you'll have to re-sand this if you want to use these masters in another mold with the walled cap mold, we have to do a bunch of clean-up before it is ready to house the cap if you had laser cut your mold vessel like I had you'll end up with flashing excess silicone that has seeped in between the cuts made in laser cutting real easy, I'll just take out the exterior flashing with my fingers next I'll remove any adhesive left on the surface of my dice with tweezers there'll be some interior flashing as well where silicone has seeped in between my dice and my platform it's important to remove this flashing because it could potentially affect the quality of your cap you can use an exacto knife but, I just use my fingernails they are soft enough to not scratch the surface of my masters meaning that I don't have to re-sand them for each mold I'll finish of with some alcohol to remove the residue on the surfaces of my dice its important to get rid of each little bit of silicone as this could potentially create cracks on the cap of our mold making it brittle our cleanup is complete so we can start attaching our sprues to our dice I'll apply the mold release liberally as we really do not want our silicone layers to bond together following the instructions, we brush it down and then apply a light layer afterwards while we're waiting for the mold release to dry we can start mixing our silicone you don't need as much silicone for the cap you just need it to be tall enough for a sizable reservoir now again, its important to pour the silicone as high up as possible once the silicone has cured, we're done! just release the sprues just release the sprues, dice and cap from the mold and you should be ready to start making dice thank you very much for watching my videos and I hope to see you soon! 12:52 - 3, 00:26 - 1, 12:38 - 3, 13:03 -1, 11:32 - 1, 3:39 - 5 9:27 - 2, 15:47 - 6, 00:26 - 1
