Hey, all
My name is david and i’m an architect with a young design / fabrication business in NYC called craftTECH.
In addition to commissioned works, i also have some designs that i have fabricated for the gallery scene. one of my designs is for a monolithic cast clear table. currently, i am considering acrylic, fiberglass resin, and other monomer/polymer-based solutions.
My question is: does anyone know what the best material for this unusual application might be? and where to get it in large enough quantities for it to be affordable, (as in 55-gal drums)?
I am THAT GUY, whom the hardware store guys ask, ‘well, what are you using it for?’ and i always reply – ‘the wrong application,’ because i almost never use products for their designed purpose. So the answer to my query may be something completely out of left field, or guam, whichever is further from our given realities.
So, please, if anyone has anything to say to a mad scientist who still thinks he can change the world, please respond. any advice will be welcomed and appreciated.
thanks for your time,
-david z
Replies
These folks have some pretty good tech support. Since your question is unusual, you may have to go through several people to get someone who knows resins that well. You'll probably have to talk to the resin manufacturers themsleves sooner or later. They can get you started. http://www.curbell.com/plastics.php3
One consideration which will be a major one is that the resins are exothermic when they cure. If you mix them in bulk they can get quite hot. A friend and I mixed a quart of a pourable bar-top mixture and poured it into a mold. It got so hot it smoked and gave off stinky fumes. You'll have to accomodate this in some way, such as really slow curing resins.
It's also important for the mixing to be thorough and the cure rate and temperature to be uniform throughout the piece. Otherwise you'll get different indices of refraction in different areas and it will show up as internal optical distortion.
There was an art professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I think his name was Kagen or something like that, who did some large cast plastic pieces. Maybe you can track something down there. http://www.rpi.edu
> If you mix them in bulk they can get quite hot.
System 3 warns in their instructions about this actually causing fires. You need to get the stuff spread out before it starts to cure so it has more surface area to give off the heat.
Large concrete structures have the same problem. Hoover dam was built with refrigeration pipes running thru it, only used temporarily during construction. Without them, it would still only be about half way cooled off today.
-- J.S.
you gotta like this guy.
Have u tried Thomas Register web site?
bobl Volo, non valeo