I shared a picture of the tube confetti yesterday, along with my story about the caps popping up. Crisis averted.
Here are a couple of sets of blank inserts that came out of the pressure pot today. There are some voids, but nothing that a shell mold won't fill.
The picture shows two sets of eleven dice. That took one of the packets. That's about $0.25 of filler materials per set, and there was a lot left over.
I saw these and thought they looked good for use in dice inserts. Well... they are little tubes.
Getting the air out seemed fine. I just mixed them into the resin before pouring. The trouble came when putting on caps.
When the caps are smooshed on, if even just one of these is out of the mold and under the cap, it springs back and slightly lifts the cap. I had to do a quick cleaning of the caps and mold tops, and it took awhile.
I will share results once I have them. 🤞
I took about a week off from pouring dice to make molds to replace a couple of older ones and to add another double d6 mold and to repair my pressure pot insert tray. The video is a fresh shell on a d20 blank insert that I poured a couple of weeks ago. Any thoughts on color for inking the numbers?
Share what you use as a tray insert. Hopefully this info is helpful to some of us.
I had the first tray insert failure the other day, and I figured I would share my experiences with this group when I was making a repair. First, I wanted to say that the failure in this instance was due to epoxy resin sticking to the side column causing lateral strain on the column when removing molds from the tray. It never had any issues with weight.
This tray insert has been used for about 10 or 11 months without issue. Past me did future me a favor, because I cut multiple side column pieces when I first made this tray. The repair was as easy as screwing a new piece into place.
When I made this tray, it was pretty easy, if you have a couple tools. I basically just used an old jigsaw that I have. A scroll saw or band saw would work the same. If you have access to a CNC, you probably stopped reading this post already. 😄
To get the shape of the circle, I went around my house to find something that fit into my pressure pot. A small, upside-down garbage can fit perfectly, so I used it as a template and traced around its perimeter. I traced it onto a sheet of HDF (high density fiberboard) or hard board (not to be confused with Hardie board), and then I cut the circle out of the sheet with my jigsaw.
For the column pieces, I used scrap 1/4" plywood. With the circle cut, I put it into the bottom of the pot and measured the depth. I cut the plywood to length. Before screwing the columns in, I used a very narrow drill bit to drill pilot holes into the plywood and hard board. At 1/4", there is a good chance of splitting.
I like this design because it does pretty much everything that I need an insert try to do. It handles weight well and levels the bottom of a pressure pot. I prefer not to have a handle across the top. I use two hands to put it in and take it out of the pot, because it is heavy when loaded with filled molds.
I have been making dice for a minute, and I did not yet experience a flash cure until today. I have primarily used EnviroTex Lite in the past, though I have other brands now.
I did a larger mix than usual, because I was using the same colors for multiple sets. I mixed a large quantity all together. It was about 350 mL. I poured some out for three additional colors, and kept most of it clear. I came back to top off dice with clear, but the cup for the clear was hot and rock solid. The funny thing is, two of the colors just had mica powder added while the third had a tiny bit of ehite pigment paste. They didn't flash cure.
I did get molds into the pressure pot, so we'll have to see how they tyrn out tomorrow. They might be salavageable.
I'm not going to blame the brand, but I am going to avoid mixing large quantities. I do notice that Part A of ETL gets a bit cloudy and thicker as you reach the bottom of the bottle, and, while I don't think that was an issue here, it might be enough to make me stick with another brand. At least one previous bottle had clumps or chunks at the bottom.
Believe it or not, this was the result of a dump mold. I got yhis one and four six-sided dice out of extras in these colors when I was pouring inserts earlier this week. I'm going to coat it one more time and give the sixes the same black numbers. d20 + 4d6 is kind of a cool set of dice.
This is from a couple of red insert sets I made recently. I used red fly-fishing materials, filled with clear resin, and then put a drop of red alcohol ink on top of the resin. I finished by piping in a swirl of resin dyed with opaque black.
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You can't see it here as much, but I may have tried to mix in the red a bit when I was swirling the black, so they didn't all get the black cloud effect as much as I would have liked. In the future, the cloudy addition is going to involve much less movement, and alcohol ink is not likely to be dropped in on top after a resin pour.
This is from two sets of inserts in the same style I made recently. I used purple fly-fishing materials along with a drop of blue and a drop of red alcohol ink before pouring clear resin into the molds. I finished by piping in a swirl of resin dyed with opaque white.
I shared a video of the demolding of the percentile die earlier today. These just came out of the shell molds yesterday, and I really like how they turned out. Any thoughts on colors for the numbers?
I pulled this set out of the pressure pot yesterday. I thought I would share the demoldong of this percentile die out of the shell molds. 🤩
This is a first for me. A d12 insert shifted inside the shell mold. 1 and 12 are fine, but it shifted 36° on the other axis.
This is my mold tray fresh out of the pressure pot. I stack about 4 high. I think this has about 34 molds on it, a few being 2d6 molds. It's heavy.
I finished these last night. I wasn't so sure about the visibility of the red when I got started, but I actually think it pops pretty nicely.
I finished these last night. I wasn't too confident in the visibility of the red when I started, but I think it pops pretty well.
I believe I shared these previously, before the ink. I went with red in the end. I was worried it wouldn't show when I was doing it, but it actually pops pretty well. I just finished these last night.
I just got these inserts out of their molds. I used a pinch of Sparkle Plenty from Mad Micas, but the rest is dollar store junk.
I bought several dollar store items awhile back, including a few bags of reflective confetti. I added about a 1/4 cup of silver confetti to 180ml of resin for these inserts. I have to let the molds sit to let air escape a bit longer than for other materials, and I do about three passes with a heat gun at different times while they're waiting to go in the pressure pot. When I wait that long, I need to use more pressure to put the lids on, but they're inserts, so minor flaws really don't matter.
I just did a couple of these inserts in shell molds, and I have a couple of sets on the way. I'm trying to decide on what color will best go with black and gold. I like seeing others' ideas. Any thoughts?
This set is a color variation on a cellophane set I did awhile back. I love how much they dance in the light. Any thoughts on color for numbers?
Any thoughts on colors for inking?
These just came out of the shell molds. This is my first washi tape set. I used a clear spray can to set the tape before going into the molds. I had a couple of corners peel back anyway, and the clear coat darkened the colors a bit. I am open to any advice on a way to set the tape or stickers.