With silicone rubber mold becoming more popular in creating crafts, there's never been a better time to get in the game than now. When you search for material online, you can find a lot of silicone rubber, and it can be challenging to pick one. You can find a lot of information online, but none precisely points out what you need to do to get started. Solving the matter of knowing what to do requires a little more digging than usual, and here we are explaining to you in a quick brief what you need to understand to build your own silicone rubber mold.

What are Silicone Rubber Molds?

Silicone rubber is a material with long-stretch elongating properties used in many industries and households, and it's ever-present in everyday items such as the rubber bands in your underwear to the usual pans and potholders used in the kitchen. With such a flexible nature, silicone conforms to the contours of everything it touches when it gets appropriately curated.

Silicone rubber makes molds for any product using various materials, such as food packages, medical devices, makeup, and jewelry components. You can also find silicone used as a sealant in your bathroom.

All molds are built using RTV silicone (Room Temperature Vulcanizing). RTV has two main components that catalyze a chemical reaction that makes the rubber "vulcanize" or get polymerized from a fluid flowing material to a non-sticky, stretchable, durable material. You can find a ton of formulas for RTV silicone, but lesser products such as craft molds use pourable silicone rubber and silicone putty.

Silicone rubber is an artificial rubber made from elastomers and polymers bypassing the use of natural rubber, so it doesn't have any organic components, such as proteins, to trigger undesirable side effects.

How to Make Pourable Silicone Rubber Mold Material

You need to mix parts A and B from the mix contained in the package to create liquid, pourable molding material. The paring for the mix is usually 1:1, but it all boils down to the elasticity required for your products. Uncured silicone rubber is liquid, and you can use it to brush the outside shape of your prototype to create a glove mold.

You can also make a blanket mold for flat items or the ever-popular block mold by placing the items inside a box specially crafted to contain your prototype while you pour the silicone on top of it. The open time for silicone rubber to be adequately curated it's about 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the brand you use. You can get a high-end finished casting mold that can withstand the fiercest conditions, depending on what you need to make.

A silicone rubber mold is great for large items, but smaller constructs get a better finish if you use silicone putty. There are many tutorials on YouTube explaining the consistency of silicone and what suits best for each project you have in mind. In the end, the quality is also determined by the tooling used in the prototype. Just make sure to put some research into understanding the type of silicone you need.