Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
So it’s about time I share some stuff I’ve been doing here…
This is far from a success, but I’m pretty sure improving.
I have a DT that is not included in this process.
I have a nano that sits in my son’s bedroom and that amazes him (2yo).
Some months ago I decided to try to make some custom hermit shells. After some research I decided to go on with epoxy resin.
To do so I needed:
1 - to make some shell models in polymer clay and / or epoxy mass (durepox)
2 - to make sillicon molds
3 - to make the epoxy resin copies
4 - to let the new shells cure before adding to the tank (I learned the bad way this is EXTREMELY important)
So I’ll describe this process I’ve done.
I used epoxy mass and polymer clay for this.
The first models I made manually the shells, but over the time I learned the hermits like pretty perfect interiors, with a perfect spiral, and did not like much my first non spiral interiors. It seems reasonable because it maches perfectly their natural anatomy, that was made to have this counter-clockwise turn.
Another problem, this shells would need a negative buoyancy but also would need to be light to carry, after tests with different resins this eas achieved with the cristal epoxy resin made by Redelease in Brazil.
The fist ones were accepted but soon they changed again, the interior was not long enough, not spiral, not comfortable:
So I tried to make exact copies of their interior (they care a lot about the interior and not so much about the external part).
Then I took different shells to copy thir internal part with sillicon. It was great because the sillicon fuses with the mold pretty easy.
To do this perfectly I had to create an opening at the end of the shell so the air dif not keep trapped inside it preventing me to get a long interior…
I also learned 2 extra things:
Turbo shells interior are easy to copy but they have a small hole at the bottom that I had to cover otherwise the sillicon would go there making the un-molding process near impossible. The second thing was that the nish shells had a hole in the internal part, not making perfectly isolated tunnels, therefore making it nearly impossible to un-mold, so I kept going only with the turbos.
Then I created and have been doing many types of exteriors:
Then the next part was to create the sillicon mold, I tried 2 part molds, but they did not work well to me because of the very small parts…
So doing a 1 part mold made much better copies on resin.
Then I cut these molds halfway to remove the model and created small openings to introduce the liquid resin before it became solid.
For the resin removing bubbles seemed pretty important, for this it was better to have more of the extensions of the model pointing downwards. When pointing upwards many times air was trapped inside preventing the resin to copy that part.
Then after drying for 24h I removed the resin models.
Then, this was VERY IMPORTANT, I let the resin cure for 7 days, then let it inside ethanol 70% solution for 2 days, then on RODI water for 7 days.
At one time I added some models before curing and it nearly crashed that small nano tank, but after doing it more carefully I did not notice any more problems. The resin curing process releases toxic gases on the first days.
Now I keep doing this with new models and the hermits are absolutely loving the shells. They even fight for them!
For the models that have been copied I painted just to keep them colorfu
Let me say to anyone who reads this post:
THIS IS JUST A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROCESS I’M USING WITH THE TROUBLES AND MISTAKES I’VE BEEN TO. I’VE BEEN ASKED TO DESCRIBE HOW I MADE IT. THIS IS NOT A POST FOR PEOPLE STIMULATING ANYONE TO COPY ME, OK? THERE ARE RISKS THAT I’M NOT 100% AWARE OF AT THE MOMENT.
This is far from a success, but I’m pretty sure improving.
I have a DT that is not included in this process.
I have a nano that sits in my son’s bedroom and that amazes him (2yo).
Some months ago I decided to try to make some custom hermit shells. After some research I decided to go on with epoxy resin.
To do so I needed:
1 - to make some shell models in polymer clay and / or epoxy mass (durepox)
2 - to make sillicon molds
3 - to make the epoxy resin copies
4 - to let the new shells cure before adding to the tank (I learned the bad way this is EXTREMELY important)
So I’ll describe this process I’ve done.
I used epoxy mass and polymer clay for this.
The first models I made manually the shells, but over the time I learned the hermits like pretty perfect interiors, with a perfect spiral, and did not like much my first non spiral interiors. It seems reasonable because it maches perfectly their natural anatomy, that was made to have this counter-clockwise turn.
Another problem, this shells would need a negative buoyancy but also would need to be light to carry, after tests with different resins this eas achieved with the cristal epoxy resin made by Redelease in Brazil.
The fist ones were accepted but soon they changed again, the interior was not long enough, not spiral, not comfortable:
So I tried to make exact copies of their interior (they care a lot about the interior and not so much about the external part).
Then I took different shells to copy thir internal part with sillicon. It was great because the sillicon fuses with the mold pretty easy.
To do this perfectly I had to create an opening at the end of the shell so the air dif not keep trapped inside it preventing me to get a long interior…
I also learned 2 extra things:
Turbo shells interior are easy to copy but they have a small hole at the bottom that I had to cover otherwise the sillicon would go there making the un-molding process near impossible. The second thing was that the nish shells had a hole in the internal part, not making perfectly isolated tunnels, therefore making it nearly impossible to un-mold, so I kept going only with the turbos.
Then I created and have been doing many types of exteriors:
Then the next part was to create the sillicon mold, I tried 2 part molds, but they did not work well to me because of the very small parts…
So doing a 1 part mold made much better copies on resin.
Then I cut these molds halfway to remove the model and created small openings to introduce the liquid resin before it became solid.
For the resin removing bubbles seemed pretty important, for this it was better to have more of the extensions of the model pointing downwards. When pointing upwards many times air was trapped inside preventing the resin to copy that part.
Then after drying for 24h I removed the resin models.
Then, this was VERY IMPORTANT, I let the resin cure for 7 days, then let it inside ethanol 70% solution for 2 days, then on RODI water for 7 days.
At one time I added some models before curing and it nearly crashed that small nano tank, but after doing it more carefully I did not notice any more problems. The resin curing process releases toxic gases on the first days.
Now I keep doing this with new models and the hermits are absolutely loving the shells. They even fight for them!
For the models that have been copied I painted just to keep them colorfu
Let me say to anyone who reads this post:
THIS IS JUST A DESCRIPTION OF THE PROCESS I’M USING WITH THE TROUBLES AND MISTAKES I’VE BEEN TO. I’VE BEEN ASKED TO DESCRIBE HOW I MADE IT. THIS IS NOT A POST FOR PEOPLE STIMULATING ANYONE TO COPY ME, OK? THERE ARE RISKS THAT I’M NOT 100% AWARE OF AT THE MOMENT.
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