Kessil

Frag plugs

If you’re talking lots of surface area I’ve had good luck with glazed bathroom tiles in the past. Something like $0.10 each. Pity I haven’t been able to find them unglazed.
 
I sent an email to BRS last week about the E-marco kit being very brittle and seeing if they had any idea why. Only response I got was letting me know they shipped out a replacement.

Mixed two small batches today and it's much much better. This kit actually has that mixing concrete chemical smell and started getting firm after only 15 min.

I'm able to pull frag plugs out of the silicone mold after about an hour and let them cure in open air for a few hours.

I going to wait a few days before I try to see if the diacs are any stronger than last time.

I'm going to mess around with adding aragonite sand as filler, start around 20% and see if it affects strength at all.
 
The frag plugs are going great. One silicone mold is easily putting out 100 plugs a day.
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Coral reefer said:
And now for the tiles and discs?
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The discs are definitely stronger this time but are still able to be broken with not much force. I'll still use them but I wouldn't be comfortable shipping or selling them.

I need to print some molds with flexible filament but I have to make some modifications to one of the printers for that material. It's a pain.
 
glee said:
Nice work. Where do I place an order? Lol
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I didn't do this with the intention of selling, I can't beat ebay prices since this material is so expensive to start with. Portland cement is a few bucks for a 50lb bag, you just need to cure the plugs for a few weeks.

However, I have had a few central valley coral sellers ask me for some and I have sold a few hundred.

$20/100 plugs.
 
Finished the printer mods so I can print flexible filament again. I know this material works well for molds but I was hoping I could find an alternative.

A set of molds (1", 2", 3" & 4") takes about 20 hours to print since it has to print SO SLOW. The material is also 3x the cost.
 
I'm using 20% coarse aragonite sand to emarco and just enough polymer that it slumps with a few shakes (thick milkshake consistency).

It is temperature sensitive, if I'm mixing a batch when it's cool in the shop (aka, when I can't sleep at 2am) the plugs aren't as strong and the top surface has a weird crystalline texture.

Solved it by putting the molds on one of my non operation printers and heating the bed up to 60°C for a few hours. I've also used this technique as a suvi heater for dinner.
 
I've used all of the 5lb kit I bought from brs. Made about 400 plugs and a more than a dozen 3" discs.

Ordered a 50lb bag of mortar and polymer. Hopefully it shows up this week so I can start cranking out a bunch more.
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Most of the plug I’ve used in the past are plaster. Is this option cheaper? I use hd tiles as well for colonies but I’m always in the market for more plugs. I use light diffuser so I need bigger plugs.


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powdertang05 said:
Most of the plug I’ve used in the past are plaster. Is this option cheaper? I use hd tiles as well for colonies but I’m always in the market for more plugs. I use light diffuser so I need bigger plugs.


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Plaster?

There are a few ways to make plugs. Some people use glue and aragonite but those have to be really thick to have any strength.

You can use Portland cement or white cement but those have to be cured for weeks or they will have huge impacts on ph.

You can use ceramic clay but it needs to be fired in a kiln.

I like the emarco because I can make plugs and discs that are only 4mm thick. The low profile looks nice when you stack them for easy fragging. Same with the plugs, when I move a plug from a rack and into the display, I cut the stem off and that can be a pain on some plugs.
 
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