I was often asked by our regular business partners, from a Chinese supplier’s perspective which factors I think to affect most for resin sculpture quality. Since many clients have asked about this, I decide to use my personal evening time to write this article today. Please kindly note, the below points are written based on our product indoor home decor resin sculpture, using material polyester resin, and my personal experience.
Raw Material
The high-quality raw material is the first step. Resin raw material somehow decides the final sculpture quality, as they have different chemical compositions and physical properties. For example, the low-quality resin material may lead to the final sculpture’s uneven surface, cracking, and deformation. My previous article mentioned our using material is polyester resin, with its selection guide, please feel free to refer to those articles if you have interested.
People Are the Key to Quality
Personally, I think, people/workers’ craftsmanship is the most important factor, please see below for the main differences.
1. Mold making
Mold making is a very important step to decide the final sculpture’s quality. If the mold is not made properly, following production processes will affect it greatly. For example, bubbles or unevenness problems may happen in the casting process, leading to sculptures with uneven surfaces or internal defects, then needs lots of labor work to fix in the polishing process.
2. Casting Process
- Casting speed and stability: casting speed too quick or too slow will cause a quality issue, experienced workers are able to control the necessary speed and rhythm.
- Casting position and angle: casting gate position and angle have a great effect on molded sculpture quality, only experienced workers control well.
- Know casting material features well: each casting material has its own feature, including fluidity and solidification time and such. The experienced worker is able to adjust the casting method and data to ensure coming molded sculpture quality based on the current using the material.
- Ability to find and solve problems: on-site problems may happen during the casting process, such as resin material shortage and air bubbles. Experienced workers can find out these potential problems and solve them on time to ensure coming molded sculpture quality and avoid unnecessary defective rates.
3. Polishing Process
- Polishing speed: experienced workers can finish fixing casted sculpture imperfect points in a short time as they know well the whole craft process and skills.
- Polishing accuracy: experienced workers with their rich experience and skills can know to fix casted sculptures where needed and how to fix them well.
- Polishing quality: experienced workers are able to control the necessarily fixed rate based on every single casted sculpture’s real situation to ensure they are within quality standards. While common workers may improperly or over-fixing to increase the defective rate which is all related to production cost.
- Risk control: on-site problems may happen during the polishing process, only experienced workers can find these potential problems and solve them on time to ensure polishing sculpture quality and avoid unnecessary defective rates.
4. After-treatment Process
After-treatment generally refers to resin sculpture surface treatment, such as glass pasting, spray painting, electroplating, water transfer printing, resin drip painting, and such. In this article, I focus on hand-painted only.
Hand painting is a common after-treatment process but requires rich working experience and skill. Hand-painting skill affects the final sculpture’s perfection. Below 2 production videos showed the main difference, please kindly help to check.
Summary
The three points I listed above are my personal opinion that affects resin sculpture quality and purchase price most from a Chinese supplier’s perspective. If you have different ideas, please feel free to leave a comment, or contact me personally by email address decorativehomeacc@gmail.com or WhatsApp at 0086 15557671348, many thanks.
