Is it better to use epoxy resin or polyester resin to embed a piece of metal?
I have a chunk of metal that was very lucky, and I’d like to make a poker card protector out of it by embedding it in plastic. I looked at the crafts store and saw both clear epoxy resin and clear polyester resin. Is there a huge difference between the two? Both need a catalyst to cure/harden the resin. Is one more durable, or higher quality? What are the differences?
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I’m not sure of the depth of resin you need, and that would be the most important thing about which you could use (both can have things “embedded” in them).
So yes, there are differences between those two types of resin although both come in two parts (one is the resin and the other is the catalyst or hardener); they’re mixed in different proportions though (epoxy is one to one, polyester is a few drops of one to a lot of the other and much more fiddly to get proportions right).
In summary, epoxy is stronger and less brittle, a bit more expensive, healthier for lungs, cures completely even where it’s exposed to air, and is used for thin coatings or for *shallow* pours.
But you can read much more about the differences, as well as the brands of each you’re likely to see, etc, in my answers to these previous questions, and on this page at my site:
http://glassattic.com/polymer/other_materials.htm
http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091115185640AAXBfZF
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AqRoGzjtN95Is41Kmm_SHHfsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20091011042033AAytK0x
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100402061140AAD0jwB
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100206091500AA7eXFv
HTH,