Studio Scale (:p) AT-AT

If you make the neck thicker you may have better luck with the 20. I was also up against a weight issue in 2x SS, making the neck thicker started to add too much weight for me too quickly, you may not have that issue. The good thing is that using a plastuct tube for the inner core mold you can mess around a bit with the inner thickness without having to change the outer detail mold.

One of the problems i had with any of the materials is that it will stretch a bit, but not compress well, resulting in a bit of distortion, hence the relief cuts. It does not want to move like an accordion bellow, but acts more like a beer cozy (credit Jason with that observation). One of the other solutions i found was to use whatever inner diameter plastruct tube you settle on to build in some very thin support rings, kind of like a skeleton. It helps to allow the material to flex a bit but the rings help to support the neck a bit and maintain the roundness. Mine does not have those in it right now, only because i ran out of plastruct on my rebuild of this, need to get around to ordering some.



MonsieurTox said:
Thanks Mike, very informative ! I did not now it was that soft. :)
Maybe the 20 hardness could work for a neck that 1/2 the size of yours ? That's something to try !

Thanks for the oil paint advice, I was just going to mist acrylic on the black dyed neck but that sounds to be a better solution !
Click to expand...
 
Well actually it will be hard to make the neck thicker (I believe the ILM ones were that thin) because of the inner armature.
The support rings are a great idea !
Yes the inner PVC tube will be great to try several diameters and see what works best...
Thanks !

mslz22 said:
If you make the neck thicker you may have better luck with the 20. I was also up against a weight issue in 2x SS, making the neck thicker started to add too much weight for me too quickly, you may not have that issue. The good thing is that using a plastuct tube for the inner core mold you can mess around a bit with the inner thickness without having to change the outer detail mold.

One of the problems i had with any of the materials is that it will stretch a bit, but not compress well, resulting in a bit of distortion, hence the relief cuts. It does not want to move like an accordion bellow, but acts more like a beer cozy (credit Jason with that observation). One of the other solutions i found was to use whatever inner diameter plastruct tube you settle on to build in some very thin support rings, kind of like a skeleton. It helps to allow the material to flex a bit but the rings help to support the neck a bit and maintain the roundness. Mine does not have those in it right now, only because i ran out of plastruct on my rebuild of this, need to get around to ordering some.
Click to expand...
 
The ILM necks were almost solid, but they were latex foam with a very thin latex skin on the surface. They had about a 1" tubular passage through the center for the armature.
For the renovation, I made the mold cylindrical so I could do a rotocast using a simple rock tumbler to slowly spin it while the flexible urethane cured. Once it cured to create a thin skin for the details, I filled it with a low density, flexible urethane expanding foam to provide support for it to hold its shape. Both urethanes were from Smooth-On. I think I used the softer flexible urethane - 20? Smooth-On said the urethanes would be much more archival than latex, but that flexible urethanes still don't last as long as rigid types.
Tinting the casting materials is a good idea. I tinted them a very dark grey.
 
One other thing. I considered using silicon for the necks, but that creates a whole host of problems when it comes to painting. Nothing wants to stick to silicone so pretty much the only thing you can paint silicone with is more silicone, so matching the paint to the rest of you model gets tricky. Also, if your mold is silicone, you need to use a GOOD mold release or else you'l end up with a solid block of silicone. You could use a hard mold, but then you'd get seam lines to contend with.

I love silicone, but not for this.
 
Thank you guys.

Adolfo, I'm using regular RTV (shore 28 I believe) and low shrink PU resin.

This is not a new part but this pull is rotocast (the solid parts are very very heavy). It turned out to be better than the solid parts (way less airbubbles).

 
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