Making a foam mold more durable

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Making a foam mold more durable

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Powder Tools	P Powder Tools posted 5 Years Ago HOT Topic Details
P Group: Forum Members Posts: 1, Visits: 6	Hey everyone, first post here and I'm looking for some advice regarding a foam mold I'm making for vacuum laminating a snowboard of sorts. I've attached a pic of the CAD model I've been working for reference. This mold is going to be machined from sheets of rigid foam insulation board and sanded to it's final shape. I'm looking for the best method of creating a stiff, durable surface on the mold with a very smooth finish. This will hopefully allow me to press multiple snowboards without the mold deteriorating quickly, as well as achieve a more true to design shape on the bottom of the snowboard without having to worry about the foam compressing unevenly. Thus far I'm thinking about laying two layers of fiberglass over the mold, either chop strand or 6oz biaxial cloth, sand down imperfections/overlaps, fill in more imperfections with some type of body filler, sand again, then brush on a gelcoat as the final layer. Is this the proper course to take? I've also considered just doing a couple hot coats over the fiberglass as well but I'm not confident I could achieve the even surface I'm trying for. Thanks for the help! Attachments Screen Shot 2019-08-15 at 8.09.02 AM.png (212 views, 501.00 KB)
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MarkMK	MarkMK posted 5 Years Ago HOT Post Details
Group: Forum Members Posts: 338, Visits: 2K	What you are proposing feels like it could work and give you a stable surface from which to mould directly from, but it does feel like a hell of a lot of work to try and get your mould surface from You'd also need to go quite thick on the fibreglass in order to give everything the stability it needs to withstand multiple pulls using vacuum. Also, when you're introducing filler and applying gel coat as the last stage, whilst relying up good mechanical bonds between materials, i think that there's a high probability of sections breaking away. Perhaps not straight away, but I think that the finished mould might not be as resilient as one made via the more conventional route By all means, the materials you've suggested would likely help make a good pattern of the part you want to produce, but you'd likely get a much better mould capable of being used repeatedly by looking to use the pattern as a base from which to make a 'proper' mould from. It might take you a little more time overall, but it should be bound together much more reliably.
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