Urethane Castings, Cast Urethane Prototype Bottles

Urethane Castings - Key Elements in Product Development and Low Volume Manufacturing

Paramount PDS, one of the few fully-integrated product development services specialists, offers highly-sophisticated expertise in urethane castings, which provide an important bridge between rapid prototyping and production.

Paramount is on the leading edge of urethane casting technology, offering a wide variety of materials to facilitate the creation of cast urethane parts or finished products, typically for market testing, clinical trials, pre-production evaluation and low volume production.

Urethane castings from Paramount can be used to closely simulate final injection-molded parts and/or finished products—quickly and inexpensively without the investment in metal tooling. Cast urethane parts and/or finished products can be completed and delivered in days after completing SRM tooling (silicone rubber molds), and short runs of several hundred pieces can be delivered within weeks in most instances. SRM tooling can take as little as 3-5 days.

With 40 years experience in advanced product development services, Paramount’s specialists offer extraordinary skill in assuring precise form and fit, thus assuring the highest quality and reliability. This translates into speed and economy for customers seeking a competitive edge through advances in product design and functionality.

Silicone Rubber RTV Mold Making – The Process:

The urethane casting process frequently begins with a stereolithography (SLA) rapid prototype master pattern. Machined and/or fabricated master patterns can also be used. The SLA RP model is inspected for accuracy then the “appearance” surfaces are bead blasted, sanded smooth, then a primer coat is applied to achieve the surface finish required to meet your application requirements. If the urethane parts are to be polished or cast in clear resin then the surface will be polished to a gloss finish in preparation to making the SRM (silicone rubber mold).

Next the SRM is created. The silicone rubber uses a room temperature vulcanization process typically referred to as RTV. Your part is carefully scrutinized by one of our technicians to determine the best molding setup to achieve the highest quality urethane casting reproduction. Parting lines are selected to assure best location thus avoiding flash on appearance surfaces. Rubber mold runners, gates, sprues and vents are located in areas to optimize mold fill, isolate and minimize air bubbles to non-critical areas, and optimize appearance surface quality.

The SLA rapid prototype master is set-up on a parting block to make a two (or many) part mold or suspended in a frame to make a one-part cut mold. Silicone is poured around the SLA master pattern to create the mold. After the silicone is fully cured (approximately one day), the master pattern is removed, and the mold is reassembled, whereupon the urethane material is poured into the SRM to create the cast urethane part.