Industrial Carving Services can create single use or multiple use moulds to suit your individual requirements.
Where moulds are required to be used multiple times, they are often made from silicone rubber and are produced from a polystyrene pattern or plug. Polystyrene is ideal for the purpose because it is light, economical and a high level of accuracy is available in its machining.
Male or female mould surfaces can be extracted from an electronic model and enhanced to make provision for parting lines, alignment dowels and trim allowances. Once the mould design is completed, the piece is machined from blocks of medium density polystyrene foam. The machined polystyrene is then filled and sanded to produce a smooth surface. After smoothing, the polystyrene is coated with a thick polyurethane hard coating which protects the foam, makes the mould rigid and provides a lightweight support structure. The hard coat provides an excellent surface for fibreglass release agents.
Single use moulds can also be created quickly using polystyrene and are ideal for casting words, numbers or artistic elements to add interest to plain surfaces or to create unique standalone features.
EXAMPLES
Sound Walls on Brisbane’s North South Bypass Tunnel
This project called for the manufacture and installation of sound barrier walls featuring textured wave patterns repeated every third panel. ICS was supplied with panel detail drawings, and produced polystyrene foam panels suitable for the client to produce rubber moulds in which three different precast concrete sound wall panels could be manufactured.
Each of the finished patterns measured 4000mm x 2400mm.
Specifications called for a textured pattern on the top wave, a smooth finish on the middle wave and corrugations along the bottom section. For the top wave, the texture was created by scanning a sample of 20mm aggregate, scaling it up by 50%, limiting the depth to a maximum of 15mm and then applying this texture to the area specified in the drawings.
The finished panels can be seen at the Ipswich Road entrance to the tunnel at Woolloongabba.
Fan Shroud
To see more examples of our work, visit the image gallery - click here
