Do you have an oven just for baking plastic? Cause I know it's not safe to bake plastics in a conventional oven

Your videos are very interesting but it would be even more if you made more drawings, videos of what you're talking about or photos 👍 I really like your videos, I hope you will continue !

Well thank you so much for making this! realise I'm a little late to the party but I needed a way to make super cheap holds and this definitely sounds like the solution. Very informative and really like your content and level of detail in this!

Could do this on home made timber holds too, fantastic idea

Guys that do wooden inlay work often use a pot of sand under that’s being heated to create dark areas on the wooden pieces (Playing with light and shadow). You say hot salt has a corrosive nature I wonder if you could do something similar with salt and a wooden hold to impart a texture on a wooden hold. Just thinking out loud! Ha

Have you tried the previous tactic of putting the hold in the oven for 1 hour, before applying the resin?

Really great video thank you!

This salt idea was being done nearly thirty years ago, by Crispin Waddy of Livingstone walls who built part of the Foundry in Sheffield. alien rock used it for handmade holds in the mid 90s

Also, do you think metal mesh could be used to keep a hold together if it failed?

I'm hoping to make a climbing wall on an existing concrete wall on a side of a building in a community that's hard to ship things to in Mexico. I'm hoping these concrete holds can be an option, 1 because the holds can be made here locally (everything is made of concrete and cement here), and 2 so the holds can blend more in with the wall to make the wall more palatable to the community. I'm trying to think of a clever way to color the holds in both a way that's subtle from the street, but also clear when you're climbing (maybe a colored fender washer under the bolt head). I want really want to avoid the secondary wood screw if possible. I wonder if a metal sleeve for the bolt can be added into the hold as the concrete is being poured so that the bolt can have extra torque added to it and that compressed the sleeve instead of the concrete, maybe the sleeve has some teeth that bite into the wall a bit to resist rotation. I wonder in your experience with the process if you think this is a direction to experiment with? The metal sleeve around the fastener idea is common in plastic injection molded/3D printed parts. Thanks for sharing all of this great info in such a well put together video!

Are the models for those hold somewhere online? Didn’t find them, but they look cool 😁

No mould investment, just expensive 3D printing????

I wonder if you could pre texture the prints at the modelling stage to assist resin adherence

I have these holds on my home wall

This is a really cool way of doing that! A buddy of mine did a similar think baking his 3d printed holds in salt. PLA is not the best for wear resistance though

Excellent video! Thanks!

Интересная идея. Ещё можно поиграться с несколькими текстурами на одном макросе.

Could you list the resin you used in your video? I am using an epoxy resin but it seemed very thin and liquid making the coat uneven.

Just FYI, This is the way we textured holds at Living Stone, or in fact from before that company was started in 1992. The first time I used it would have been around 1987. There were tens of thousands of these holds at many major climbing walls like the Castle, The Foundry, Undercover Rock, Glasgow Climbing Centre, Gloucester, etc. They often lasted for maybe 15 years before polishing, and were very resistant to chipping compared with cast holds. We also frequently used dual (or more ) textures as well. It is quite labour intensive, and one other problem we found was that the color tended to fade due to blooming if the salt or sugar was simply dissolved out by leaving the holds underwater for a while. Scrubbing them individually was too time consuming if you're making hundreds in a day. Nice to see the technique being rediscovered..

ah rainbow rocket! nice :-)

I've taken some inspiration from your videos about this, and I might try this surface texturing method as part of my overall process, which while it also involves 3D printed holds, my idea is a bit different; I intend to print holds with a moderately dense infill (gyroid) pattern, and with 0 "bottom" layers, so that the infill structure is exposed from the back of the hold. Then, I'll use your technique here to give the outward surface of the holds a texture, and secondarily to seal the surface and make it "watertight" so to speak. The final step is to flip them over and fill the holds with some kind of resin/epoxy (trying to find casting PU locally). I haven't actually done this yet but it seems like it should make for extremely strong holds. What do you think, have you tried anything similar?

Hiya, looking to make a hold set for my climbing gym soon. I'm particularly curious how this texture feels compared to traditionally casted holds. I am tempted to use your process to create silicone molds for casts, but i wonder if the silicone will be able to fill all of the pores to capture the depth of the texture.

I used to use caster sugar mixed with epoxy resin to provide deck grip on my home made windsurfers, some people preferred table sugar,,, great video..

this is fucking awesome dude!

Hi Charles. Do you know how the Hold Companies make the Dual Texture Holds. Specifically I’m trying to figure out how they achieve the smooth finish on the foam before casting the foam in the silicone. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

interesting thanks for sharing

Your process doesn't surpass what can be achieved with foam masters on an industrial level currently. People have been adding sand on their master for decades, but your extraction method is interesting. Also your shapes look pretty good. Talk to Green Holds, they seem to need a designer.

Uhh .. I like to try this! I'm new to climbing and would like to try and 3D scan (with some app like Polycam) existing boulders in the gym .. mix mash them around and build them with your method for a nice little privat training wall.

Thank you. Been wondering how to use 3d prints but struggling with texture.

Great 💡!

Thanks lets see if it works out i will let you know how it went!

Certainly a great way to prototype holds. Creative thinking.

I'm pretty kean to give this a try sometime!! I'll definitely let you know how I get on.

Dude I was just talking with my setters today about whether 3d printed holds could print proper texture. This looks like a great option

I've been designing a part for my printer which I want to be as strong as possible, and I've designed it to be remelted in salt, while mounted in it's mating aluminium parts. The part is basically a very short M8x1 hollow bolt printed in PETG, so the remelting in-place will be necessary to ensure the threads stay sharp and the tensile strength il sufficient. Having messed with salt remelt before, I knew that these voids show up at the high points of the part, even with 100% infill. I suspect that this is partly due to small air voids that are left in even 100% infill areas. I know this is something that is visible when you try to print transparent parts; bubbles are very hard to avoid. Anyways, the point I wanted to get to, is that I designed sacrificial sprues into my part, so that the void can "flow up" the sprues, which can then be cut off. I'm not done designing the whole system so I've yet to actually try the remelt and see the result. I've also been concerned with finding some sort of mold release agent for the PETG threads, I hope vaseline will do an adequate job

I reckon the holes in the back could be shrinkage in a similar way to an injection moulded part would … maybe

How much time you let it dry before putting stress into it? Do your first hold got brittle? i am using only cement too

Hi, very creative approach man! From a first look it seems very labour intensive but there is some good thinking in your idea. I'd be up to talk to you about your idea as a manufacturer. Do you have any mail to contact you in private?

You are amazing!! I have been printing holds for my home wall for a wile now. Always the same issue. How do I make texture. Thank you for your solution to a huge struggle!!

Incredibly interesting approach. Major props for coming up with this. I've been working through some ways to try to add coatings of sand on top of very thin applications of resin over PLA holds as well (though I later go on to create a traditional mold around those before pouring the finished product). Your approach has a special appeal though of generating "holes" rather than "bumps" like mine does. I worry about the longevity of the bumps under high traffic. Is there a reason you wouldn't do this same process just using the PLA pieces after texturing as positives in a mold? Seems preferable for drastically reducing the work required for a duplicate, plus you could use much stronger and harder, typical polyurethanes for your finished pieces. Genuinely curious what you find to be the downside to this approach. You're the first person I've ever seen/heard report any success using 3d printed thermoplastics directly on the wall.

At first I was thinking "cool, but not easier or cheaper compared to casting." Then you brought in 3-D printing, Genius!

You could try out the salt remelt process of CNC Kitchen, with larger grain size salt

Hi, great video!. I have a question. Do you think i could use epoxi resin instead of the PE?. Also im thinking of printing holds, then adding texture and finally make a silicone mold for fast reproduccion. Think this will work?. Thanks for sharing

I have a question- is there something about PLA that makes this process work? Would it be worth it to try this process with a stronger plastic like PETG?

This is so awesome! I’m gonna definitely try this over my spring break

Awesome idea and video. Thank a million

This is rad!

Looking to build a climbing volume. You mentioned in your volume video you would make one on templates etc, have you got any templates you could share ? Thank you!

Not sure if you have seen it already but I wanted to mention it here as you might be able to try it. People have been using very finely ground salt to pack around 3d prints, then reheating them in an oven to get a more homogeneous part. During the process it gives the parts the surface finish of the finely ground salt particles. You could try a similar process for this application using the larger salt grains you sifted out. Maybe only submerge the exposed gripping face to the salt, then bake it. The advantage here would be that because the texture is melted in the plastic it may be stronger than using the resin. Not sure if I can link the video, but I know CNC Kitchen made a video on it.

I really love your Idea to create such nice texturing. Considering the strength and longevity of your holds, maybe instead make molds using this texturing technique. You'd get the same chance to create interesting textures and texture variations, but you can test multiple casted materials to assess their longevity and strength. Especially bigger holds in a climbing gym receive extreme abuse, which I'm sure 3d printed solutions won't survive without sufficient strengthening through other means.