[Katherine Swift]

This question comes through email by David:

I have been invited to help a colleague on what could potentially be a very important scientific project.

The interesting thing about my colleague is that he is an academic, and is try to prove that my not patenting an invention, this stimulate innovation.

What I would like to ask is your help about replication off an ?ruled-grating?.  A ?ruled-grating? is a piece of glass which has lines cut onto a surface ? the lines are parallel to one another, and there are 1800 of these lines in 1mm, so they are only about 0.5 micron apart.

Can you suggest a resin that ?s capable of copying this ultra-fine detail please?

Casting against glass, do I need a release agent?  Is the release agent water soluble?

We have a very tight deadline to make some models to prove a theory, so a reply at your earliest convenience would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Katherine Swift]

Hi Dave,

Im not sure what youre trying to accomplish here.  What do you hope the final casting of lines looks like?

My first question is whether or not you are going to try to get the resin off the glass.  If the answer is yes, then glass is not going to work as a mold.  The resin will stick to the glass, even with a mold release.

Can you share some more information about what youre trying to do?

[Dave]

Hello Katherine

BTW – David 🙂  David – Only my mum say that – and only when Im naughty!

I am trying to replicate the surface of the grating, and be left with a sub-master.  This Ineed for the experiments.

In the past, we replicated mirror geometry off of diamond-turned masters, using a release agent and epoxy adhesive, but I assumed that casting resins could be easier, cheapr and faster.

Do you need any more information?

Cheers

Dave

[Katherine Swift]

Dave (no more David!),

I dont think casting resins are going to work for what you want to do.  There might be some kind of industrial resin that could do this, but I have no experience with them and cant make a recommendation.

Good luck!

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