- Hey and welcome to another Alumilite Explains.
Today we're talking about Tech Specs.
What are Tech Specs?
Well, they're the properties that you need to know about the
material that you're about to use,
or that you're about to purchase.
Maybe you're making a decision.
This is important info y'all you gotta know this stuff.
So we're gonna walk through it.
I'm gonna to talk you through the properties,
at a very high level, so that you know what you're doing.
I'm gonna start with a computer screen,
on the TV because
I think it's gonna be easier for all of us.
All right, so how to get to a Tech spec?
Well, go to the website
and then type in whatever product that
you're looking to learn more about,
or you can navigate through the actual products tab and all
that type of stuff.
I hope you know how to use a website by now.
So we're just going to skip this
and I'm gonna go to our first example
and that's Amazing Clear Cast.
On the product page, you see the photo,
you see a beautiful description that the team wrote
and then all the way down here, this big gray box.
Oh, look at that Technical Specifications.
Now we've got some obvious ones here.
So forgive me for the brevity around those.
But I want to stop
and talk about some of the more complex ones.
So product Amazing Clear Cast, color, clear.
I hope you're with me so far.
Mixed ratio, one-to-one by volume.
You've probably heard of that before,
but pay attention to this one
when it comes to other products,
foams and other things might be two to one or 10 to one.
So this is an important one,
even though it feels kind of basic right now.
All right pot life,
you might've heard this called open time or work time.
We're talking about the same thing here.
It's how much time you have to work with the material before
things are going to start happening
and you need to be done using it basically.
Demold time is pretty self-explanatory too
This one, although pay attention that a hundred grams,
that means in a mass that's a hundred grams worth,
this is how long it's going to take.
If you have more mass than a hundred grams,
is probably gonna be shorter.
And if you have less mass it might be longer.
So demold time is on a hundred grand mass.
Now mix viscosity, CPS. What CPS?
Well, that's centipoise
and that's actually how we measure viscosity,
a higher centipoise number, like the thousands,
is more like honey or fix syrup in molasses
and a lower number closer to 10, a hundred,
something like that is more water like.
So when we look at Amazing ClearCast at 2,600,
it's gonna be about the consistency of warm honey.
You'll see this change as things go on with silicones
and stuff like that.
But for now you get it, centipoise is how you say it.
All right, the next one is specific gravity.
This one's actually pretty unique and interesting
and important to pay attention to depending on your project.
The specific gravity is usually around one or two,
it's a lower number.
And one is actually what the density of water is.
This is actually a measure of density.
So if your number of your material is less than one,
that material is gonna float,
because it's less than the water.
And if it's greater than one,
then it's gonna sink, because it's more dense with water.
So looking at this
Amazing Clear Cast is just a little bit denser than water.
So technically it's gonna sink.
If you're trying to do inclusions and suspending things,
this is an important number to pay attention to.
All right. Shore Hardness, that's a measure of hardness.
I had to kind of walk you through the door on that one.
There are different scales of Shore hardness.
There's the double lot scale, there's the A scale,
there's the D scale.
The A's for silicone, the Ds for residence,
you can look that up in a different video
and maybe we should actually go over that
in a different video.
But for now just recognize that it's actually how hard
the material is that you're working with..
In this case 80 D,
is actually a pretty stiff resin on the D scale.
I do have to clarify that this is the hardness measure.
Once it's cured, it's liquid beforehand
and then it cures hard.
Somebody was gonna ask, I just needed to clarify.
All right, Shrinkage.
Well, shrinkage is exactly what it sounds like.
When you pour your material and it cures,
some of that material might actually
shrink away a little bit.
It might actually lose some of its volume considering
it's gonna actually heat up
and there's gonna go through a chemical process.
How much is it?
Well, if you look 0.003 inches per inch.
So that's barely any shrinkage in this case,
but in other products, that number is a little bit higher.
You'll see that in clear, slow
and some of the other urethane residents.
So you just have to accommodate that.
Tensile strength, is how much tension this thing
can be put under before it actually breaks.
This test the ASTM,
is one that you can look up
and actually see the specifics on how we test this.
But just understand,
we're kind of pulling things apart in this moment.
How much tension can it be under,
before a catastrophic fails.
Now for elongation,
it's really just how much you can actually elongate.
Just think of stretch a little bit the material.
That's why you see one to 3% here on Amazing Clear Cast,
because it's a rigid hard resin.
When we go over to the silicones,
you're gonna see elongation in the hundreds of percentages,
because that's what that stuff's made for.
Now Heat resistance
and heat deflection temperature,
actually have a whole video about the difference
between those two things.
And I go into full detail.
So I'm gonna make you go watch the video over there,
but I'll give you a preview right now that basically says,
heat resistance, is a number that's really, really high,
where people are talking about catastrophic failure
and heat deflection temperature,
is when your material starts to soften,
but isn't permanently damaged.
Now this last one on
Amazing Clear Cast is my favorite. FDA compliant, yes.
(trumpet blows)
Now it's more complicated than that Of course,
this is FDA compliant.
Once it's been fully cured and then wash with soap
and dish water and FDA compliance is different
than FDA approved.
And there's a bunch of stuff that goes into that.
But just so you know that once you use this material
and use it properly and take care of it appropriately,
it is food safe, FDA compliant, all right.
You get it, right when you know what we're doing.
You've heard some of these terms before,
but we're ripping through them.
Cause I wanted to make sure that you know what you're doing.
So let's jump onto another product
and do the same thing.
Onto Amazing Mold Maker,
this is our first silicone that we're seeing down here.
So we're gonna see some different information.
So looking through this Tech Specs,
here's what I see that I think we should talk about.
Number one is that, shore hardness look it's 28.
So remember that's a different scale.
The other thing are these Die B and Die T,
Tear strength numbers.
Those are two different tests that you can actually look up.
The T is actually kind of peeling
a pre-cut piece of silicone.
And die B is actually
pulling apart a piece of pre-cut silicone.
They're just gonna tell you how durable and stretchy
and how rough it's gonna be,
for you while you're trying to demode the piece.
If you have a little cut in your mode let's say,
some silicones with a low tear strength
are gonna immediately just rip apart.
And you're not gonna be able to use them anymore.
But ones with a very high tear strength,
you're really gonna be able to pull that thing
and get your part out.
Our high strength series has a very high tear strength.
I hope that was obvious because it's called high strength.
The other two I want to talk about
are elongation and temperature resistance.
The elongation, remember I told you
it was gonna be in the hundreds.
Look at this 600%,
a little bit more than the one or one to three,
I think it was for Amazing Clear Cast.
Now temperature resistance.
This is one of my favorite parts of silicone.
The range is so wide.
Look at this negative 67 degrees and then 395.
Oh, silicone is so cool.
All right, let's pop over to clear slow.
This is a clear urethane,
so it's a little bit different
than the Amazing Clear Cast that we have.
To name, product, mix ratio, pot life,
demold time, mixed viscosity, specific gravity,
shore hardness, shrinkage.
If you'll notice 0.05 is a little bit more than three,
that actually matters,
if you're doing a bigger pour of clear slow.
The tensile strength,
the elongation and the temperature resistance.
Look at this,
we're on product number three, right now.
This is a urethane,
that might be a scary product for some of you,
but you actually know all of this already.
We just went over this.
The only attribute I really want to call on specifically
on this one, is actually the mix viscosity.
The mixed viscosity is 400 compared
to Amazing Clear Cast, 2,600.
So this when you mix it up,
it's gonna feel water like in comparison.
Remember on this specific,
not the specific gravity of the mixed viscosity,
the lower the number of mixed viscosity,
the more water it is,
the higher the number it is the more like laffy taffy,
you know, at like the on the coast.
isn't that On the east coast, right?
But the, in this machine,
you know, my I'm so scared I'm gonna get caught
in one of those.
It's an irrational fear but it's a fear.
All right, it's time for a new product
that a lot of you have not seen.
And that is this Flex Foam.
I like this, when this TV with the website,
I can pull this up.
So that looks like a brick. It's actually a foam brick.
You can see it scrunchy there.
So we're gonna have different actual product attributes.
Then we do some of the harder residents.
Let's take a look.
We see a lot of the same stuff here.
We see the product, the color, the mix ratio,
all that type of stuff,
but we do notice the shore hardness side of this says
three to eight pounds density.
Well that's because we're not necessarily talking about the
shore hardness on that hardness scale,
we're talking about foam here.
So it's gonna have a certain amount of squish to it.
It's gonna have a certain density.
That's how we like to think about foams,
is the density measure.
All right now, shrinkage,
we actually use as a good placeholder
and completely misled you there because it's not shrinkage,
it's actually expansion.
So this stuff expands three to five times.
So a three to five times expansion means
if I've got one ounce of material,
I'm gonna end up with three ounces or
five ounces of foam in that same cup I mixed.
I did this when I did this really cool, massive cube,
that if you haven't seen that video somewhere,
maybe we can throw you a quick highlight,
of some of that stuff,
rising to the surface.
This is really cool material.
One of my favorites that we have,
and I don't think he gets enough love.
(upbeat music)
The last one that flex modulates is, I mean,
you could imagine it's actually a measure of its flexibility
and kind of it's.
I don't know how you even describe this.
I don't know how to describe this one.
Sorry hold on.
Look flex modulus, is basically how much
this stuff is going to actually flex for you
and kind of the ranges of it.
If you have a flex foam like this,
that we've cut aptly named for you,
it's gonna be pretty flexible.
It's gonna be seed cushiony soft.
If you have a harder foam,
that flexibility is not gonna be there.
It's still foam.
It's still has a density, it still has all those attributes,
but it's not flexible.
Now you've seen foams,
but have you seen the rubbers that we have?
This stuff's actually really, really cool.
So this is flex 70.
If you haven't seen this before,
I'll pull this image up.
It's actually, so that's bending
and it snaps back to its regular shape.
It's really cool.
It's urethane rubber. All right, here we go.
Let's look at these text bags, product flex 70,
color, translucent yellow,
mix ratio, a one-to-one by weight,
pot life four minutes. It's really hard to use.
I've tried to mix this up. It's really tense,
everybody in the shop has to be quiet.
It's like dad, turning on the music in the car,
because it's raining and he's got to focus.
I mean, look at this.
I'll just keep going, you got mixed viscosity, demold time,
specific gravity, shore hardness, shrinkage,
potential strength and elongation.
Yeah. You're pros at this by now,
you know, all these numbers,
you know what all this means.
Now to make sure you're the absolute expert of experts here,
when it comes to looking at a Text Specs
and understanding it,
we'll do the last thing, which is
an opaque urethane resin.
Like our Amazing Casting Resident.
You can get this at Michael's.
You can get this at your local hobby store even,
but it still has attributes that we should know about.
We know the product, we know the color,
we know the pot life, we know the demold time,
the mix viscosity,
but I wanna talk about the mix of viscosity.
This is really, really low.
This is 90, but basically like mixing water.
This makes it a really great product.
If you're trying to fill a really complex mold,
where you want everything to flow in there appropriately,
it makes a super quick
and the open time gives you not much time to do it.
So having water,
water thin material is gonna help with air release,
it's gonna help with getting things into the pressure pot
and then refilling it to really good material.
But pay attention to that mixed viscosity,
it's gonna affect the way you use this material.
The only other thing to pay attention to on
the Amazing Casting Resin, is that elongation.
A little bit more here. It's 10%.
So that's something where the material itself
its gonna give you more flex
than some of the other rear things that we have.
And then heat deflection temperature of 185.
So I mean, all things considered.
This is really cool material
and it's very different than the clear slow,
which is also a urethane resin that we talked about earlier.
Now you think, you know, okay,
I don't know how to navigate this stuff, but you do though.
You know the difference between all of these terms,
you know the difference between all these materials.
Now you can navigate your way through.
What's best for your project.
Head to the website,
type in you type in the material you already know,
or go through the actual search tab
and start comparing these things.
I do talk to you about the difference between silicones
and having to choose one of those,
but sometimes this is fun to explore on your own.
So hit the website and check it out for yourself.
Now, if you want more information,
right next to the Tech Specs,
are technical data sheets and safety data sheets.
Indoors, there's a lot of words that
you might not understand.
I know I didn't understand all of them
when I first started reading these things.
So it might feel more intimidating.
That's why we've put these Tech Specs over here to the side,
so you can get the information you need easier and sooner,
to be honest with you.
Now, before you go,
if you like this video, please do me a favor
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So next time, I'll see you guys later.
(upbeat music)