Foam latex taking soooo long to gel.

Jez Roberts

Hello there ! 

I am recently learning foam latex and attempting a grinch face. 

I have a well built ultra cal 30 mold that I made, and an ultra cal 30 core with a pvc pipe insert for pulling the mold. 

I have a small batch mixer, in which I run my piece with 
150 base 
30 foaming 
15 cure 
17 gel ( it’s cold here in Utah right now) 

I run my times at 
1 min mixing 
6 min whipping 
5 min medium refine 
and 5-8 min ultra refine 
1 min 30 sec for final mix once gel is in. 

I have added more and more gel agent / time to my DEAMONIA step yet it still takes over an hour for it to gel enough to bake. I am feeling lost,
yours truly, 
Aspen Raine of R of R fx 

Matt Winston

Hi @Jez Roberts ! Sorry to hear you've been having some trouble. Foam running is definitely tricky to get the hang of. Here's some advice (and a couple questions) from our instructor Mark Viniello:

1. What is the foam system? (Assuming MM)
2. What is temp & humidity of the room you're running foam in?

Regardless… Here is my recommendation:

Extend the mid-refine to 10 min. (Assuming it’s speed 2 on a Sunbeam. If it’s higher than speed 2, it may increase the rise slightly)

Extend the final refine to 12 min.

Keep everything else the same. That’s a cumulative time of 28 min run... which is fine.

Slow gels are usually due to a cold environment or high ammonia content in the mix. By increasing mid & final, you will be extracting more ammonia out of the batch.

I rarely mess with the component ratio; I’m always tweaking run time to extend or shorten my gel time.

Hope this helps! Please keep me posted on the results!
Mark