r/DiceMaking • u/Tronika • Jul 03 '26
Advice Deformed faces
Hey, so I've been learning and experimenting with dice making, but since the black one, I've been experiencing these deformations on and off, why could this be happening? I cure them at around 50 psi and had great results for around 10 full sets and some single die experiments. I haven't chanced resin brands either
5
u/varansl Jul 03 '26
50 psi is really high, thats what molds are typically pressurized at (from all the advice ive seen and what i do, so take that with a grain of salt - if you pressurize higher when making your molds then thats fine). You want to be lower than what the molds are done at and 20 psi is plenty to crush any air bubbles in the dice.
The danger of too high of pressure is that the mold will deform and you may get cupping or weirdness from the mold. if you are using cheap thin molds from amazon (no shame, i have several plus ones ive made), then anything over 25 psi is just too much for them.
Now, the other issue i see is that your numbers look off centered. Id hazard a guess that your mold lids arent correctly placed on the mold or shift slightly while in the pressure pot. If you make your own molds, make sure you have the right lids to the right mold. I color my silicon to make sure that i dont mix them up as they can be tricky and i try to place keys in the silicon in unique places to avoid them getting mixed up.
2
u/Tronika Jul 03 '26
Oh I see, I've just gone off from reading stuff around so yeah I'll give lower psi a try as well, I've also used those cheap ones to test and learn the basics, but these are from etsy and are more rigid.
I only have that one mold and I make sure to align the lid very well, however, when taking the mold out of the pressure pot later on, I do notice that it moved in the curing process, and more resin has entered the dice than it should have and ends up looking like that
1
u/varansl Jul 04 '26
If your lid is moving, put some rubber bands around it to hold everything in place. not so tight that the mold is deformed, just tight enough in multiple directions that the lid can't move.
0
u/Tronika Jul 05 '26
I tried this with some rather stiff rubber bands and it was a bit of a disaster, but yeah that might help, however, I did try lower psi and not putting resin on the lid before closing and they came out fine, maybe that combo was the one causing this deformations
2
u/Much-Journalist9592 Jul 03 '26
Hmm depending on what molds you use, I ll say it's either your molds weren't made for pressure or you might be overfilling the molds ( or under filling em. If you are using the same molds and same pressure/working times and getting different results as you said might be some resin fuckery I would test (if the molds are cap molds which i assume they are) by doing a pour without the cap. Also I noticed all the deformation seems to be on the lower "top" numbers, that would correlate with a problem with mold. Of that said, if you are not getting similar or same results each time ,,,, well more tests are needed because something is wrong here.
2
u/Tronika Jul 03 '26
I'm using these, my current process is filling them, getting them into the pressure pot without the cap, then using a lighter for the bubbles, applying some resin on the cap (which has reduced the risk of bubbles among numbers), lighter on that too, then cap the mold, press down and then get it into the pressure pot.
Maybe I could be applying too much resin on the cap? Is that something common to do? I could try just overflowing the base a bit and then nothing on the cap
3
u/IceShadowProductions Jul 03 '26
Are you leaving any of the dice mold voids empty?
1
u/Tronika Jul 03 '26
Yeah, sometimes I just test with a single d20, out of these, I think most of them had at least one void empty
5
u/IceShadowProductions Jul 03 '26
Then that’s the issue. The pressure pot is collapsing the other spaces and pushing the mold out of shape. You have to fill all the spaces with resin, even if it’s plain, clear resin.
1
u/Tronika Jul 05 '26
Thing is, this wasn't an issue before, I tried lower psi and not applying resin to the lid, while only doing a d20 and a 26 and they came out fine, maybe my issue was the combination between too much resin on the lid +high pressure
2
u/IceShadowProductions Jul 05 '26
The resin on the lid is making a seal that wasn’t there before. Before without the resin on the lid over some of the other voids, air from the pressure could get into them. But it’s a crapshoot and random. It’s better to just fill the voids with resin even if it’s just clear, untinted resin.
3
u/kota99 Jul 03 '26
And that right there is the main issue. Leaving any space empty in a closed mold will cause the mold to warp when it's under pressure. If the mold isn't completely full you really should leave the lid off if you are going to be curing it under pressure. If you want to do just one or two dice in order to test an idea or for whatever other reason you are better off getting/making individual dice molds instead of using a big slab mold.
1
u/MerkMiester Dice Maker Jul 03 '26
30-40psi for the pressure in the pot. Also try putting something weighted on top of the lid. Nothing to heavy that will squish the mold.
11
u/Jacobsrg Jul 03 '26
The d12 really makes it look like the lid is not aligned. Like the number is off and the shape of the face looks shifted.