Painting Flex Foam

[Mados]

A friend and I will be recieving some armor cast in Flex Foam 25 sometime soon, so I wanted to start looking into paint options. What works well for this? I assume regular rattle can sprays flake off?

 

[Corsairgryl]

Pretty much all foam needs to be sealed before painting, I'm not familiar with flex foam, if its small cell foam water based stuff like Modpodge works, larger cell I' ve seen people recommend Flex Bond and latex base paint

 

[mrbungle]

spray paint will work ok but it does flake or rub off. i made odst parts out of foam flex 25 and some parts held the paint well and other parts did not , mainly because of wear on the part.

make sure you wash the part before painting. left over release agent will make the paint do funny stuff.

 

[Darth Lars]

I would like to know if urethane foam like this one would take "Vinyl Dye" spray.
The belt for my Clone Trooper costume is also cast in some kind of urethane.

 

[CustomPropSculptorGuy]

It might. I use flex foam all the time. The problem with it is, if you use a silicone mold rubber as a dragon skin or a Rebound, you don't need to use a release agent.

When washing it, don't use more than a teaspoon of dawn to 4 cups of water; use a hand towel to buff the surface and dry it with another towel as soon as the "whatever" your cleaning off, is off. It will take a hell of a time to dry it if the water soaks into to it - not so much the 25 as the flex foam 17 as it's a softer density.

With painting, you MUST - and I can not emphasize this enough - you MUST mist on your first coat of paint. No it doesn't matter what type of paint you use, but if you have a choice, Krylon works the best to my usage. Also, be sure to seal the paint with a coat of clear, be it gloss, matte, what ever your fancy. Case and point, my Turtle head is made from flex foam, and the paint I used to throw a quick job on it is all Krylon...

Hope that helps...

 

[Mados]

Thanks for all the replies. I have a particular Krylon color I wanted to use, might try the misting technique. Any more input will be appreciated.

 

[mrbungle]

i second custompropguy. mist your paint layers on.

i did have a problem with flex foam it 25 in rebound 25 molds. without a release agent the skin of the foam would not form properly in spots. i solved the problem using vasoline mixed with paint thinner brushed into the molds and no more skinning problems. but had to make sure the surface of the part was clean before painting. using mold max 20 i did not have to use a release agent when useing FFI 25.

 

[CustomPropSculptorGuy]

Wow - yea I used Flex25 and didn't have a problem with my TMNT heads... What did you use for a the mold shell??

 

[Mados]

Vaseline=one of the hardest things known to man to wash off.:lol

 

[coofunkcurly]

Thanks for sharing everyone! I am about to venture into my first projects with FlexFoam IT! and this is helpful.

CPSG, you really don't use a release with a silicone mold?

 

[mrbungle]

Wow - yea I used Flex25 and didn't have a problem with my TMNT heads... What did you use for a the mold shell??

i was after a much smoother finish than you were, i think. your turtle heads are textured and my armor parts were smooth. i used fiberglass mother molds for them. i did not have a plug for the inside of the mold.
so that might have been part of the problem.

smooth-on recommended the vasoline and paint thinner mix. the trick is to mix alot more thinner than vasoline. then brush it in the molds.

 

[Sean Bradley]

I posed this question to a bunch of people at D*con this year as someone asked me and I didn't have a satisfactory answer. Someone (and I wish I remembered who) said that they mist on a fine coat of spray adhesive like 3M Super 77 before they painted their flex foam armor with standard spray paints, and they've never had to repaint the parts since. Prior to that they were having to repaint the parts every time they wore them for an event.

I hope thats helpful or that someone has a chance to experiment and verify this method. Sounds logical to me to promote the bond with the spraypaints with a flexible base. If onlyI had any flexfoam parts around I could experiment with I'd give it a shot myself.

 

[Finhead]

It would be far easier to use a flexible adhesion promoter designed to adhere to urethane and paint than use 3M glue.

I posed this question to a bunch of people at D*con this year as someone asked me and I didn't have a satisfactory answer. Someone (and I wish I remembered who) said that they mist on a fine coat of spray adhesive like 3M Super 77 before they painted their flex foam armor with standard spray paints, and they've never had to repaint the parts since. Prior to that they were having to repaint the parts every time they wore them for an event.

I hope thats helpful or that someone has a chance to experiment and verify this method. Sounds logical to me to promote the bond with the spraypaints with a flexible base. If onlyI had any flexfoam parts around I could experiment with I'd give it a shot myself.

 

[Mados]

Thanks again for all the information. I love this place!