construction:headfur:flocking

Flocking

Flocking: this technique is the same process that puts the fuzz on those little plastic keychain animals: you attach an electrode to whatever you're planning to stick the fur to, coat the piece in some kind of adhesive (like pax, which is a prostaide/cabosil mixture), then take a flocking device (which can be ordered and runs somewhere in the area of $100-200) filled with fibers of the correct length and turn it on. Through the same process that makes your hair stand up when you've got a lot of static electricity running through you, the little fibers shoot out from a pepper-shaker like device and imbed themselves onto the surface of the piece.

Advantages: lots: fast, looks great, good movement for mechanicals, Like hair-punching but FAST!

Drawbacks:Messy (the hair goes EVERYWHERE, shooting like teeny missiles), limited control for the application (do small areas, and be sure you've painted the pattern on the piece beforehand!), huge amounts of unnecessary shock-therapy, messy (did I say this was messy?), expensive equipment needed to apply the material, bother of cutting up the fibers to the right length in the first place (another good use for dog-clippers).


From: Smash Greywolf
The process of electrostatic flocking is something I learned about from Lex, and we had some talk of it a while back on the list. It involves blowing little bits of fur through a flocking gun at your subject. The subject has one charge, the fur bits have another. When they hit the subject to be furred, it is covered with adhesive, and the bits of fur hit the subject (Like an animal head or something) one end first, and the fur sets into the adhesive. Then, before the adhesive sets you need to try to lay the fur over if you need it to lay in a specific direction.

This process works for small short bits of fur, and looks really good. Unfortunately, it's not too durable,and is only good to look at. It's ideal when you are working for film, or video, but not for repetative use, or stage production, because it deteriorates rapidly, and is VERY time/cost consuming to maintain.

It looks great though for things like short muzzle fur…

Lex used it for some animatronic wolves that he did. I saw them on video, and they looked fantastic!

The advantage to flocking in animatronics is that you don't have to deal with a backing layer of the fur, and it's resistance against your servo actions under the latex skin. It ends up looking VERY real.


From: Steve Axtell
Smash has basically explained the FLOCKING process below. I would add that the durability of the flocking is entirely dependant on the glue type used, the thickness of the glue base and the temperate conditions at the time of the flocking.

The result should be strong and stable and never loose of flakey. Once done properly it should be able to be rubbed and not be falling out. Only after about 100-200 strong rubs should it show wear.

My ImagineLand puppets for example have only minimal wear after shooting 32 episodes, which takes about 8 hours of shooting for each episode. 8×32=256 actual hours on each puppet. The only places that show ANY wear would be the moving places around the mouth. That is fine for television work with a budget, but probably not for costumes that may get more physical abuse - expecially in the sports arenas.

The glue I use for flocking is water based and is called Mastobond. I get it in LA.

Another thing, the flocking fibers are actually pulled out of the wand container by the electromagnet forces. There is no fan in the hand unit. You can assist the action by shaking it. The hand unit can be purchased for around $800. It has a powersupply, wand with various sized containers with perf lids and a ground lead for connecting to the base your object is mounted to.

For camera closeups on animals where short fur is required and absolute or psuedo-realism is expected - Flocking is the way to go.

Okay - there IS a cheaper Battery only unit that costs approx- $400 . It's called the CP40 from Cellusuede Products (815) 964-7949. It takes 3 D cell batteries and has only once connection cable to give the subject a negative charge while the flocking wand has a positive charge.

I have scanned a photo of the ad and you can find it at

http://www.axtell.com/

Do a search for flock.


From Tephra Adularia
Van Dyke's Restorers' catalog has flocking guns and materials. There's a manual flocking gun for under $30 (they deal in people making things like jewelry boxes so the big guns that work with air compressors aren't exactly in demand). They also have long fiber rayon flock in forest green, royal blue, red, brown, balck, gold, silver-grey, and white available in 1/2 and 1 pound packages (one pound will cover 75-100 sq. ft). The flocking adhesive is available in the same colors as the flock plus clear in some undisclosed amount of ounces, pints and gallons.

/home/furryfursuit/faq/data/pages/construction/headfur/flocking.txt · Last modified: 2011/08/11 12:01 (external edit)

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