What is epoxy resin?
Epoxy resin is a liquid adhesive that becomes solid when mixed in a 2:1 ratio with the hardener. It is used to coat, laminate, and infuse different materials, providing strength, durability, and waterproofing — though it typically requires a few days to set.
It bonds well with almost all materials, whether metal, plastic, glass, ceramic, wood, or rubber. But make sure to clean the surface properly, because epoxy doesn’t like greasy surfaces.
Epoxy resin is such a durable material and may be expensive to apply. If you have a tight budget and cannot wait to renovate, you could always opt to use paint.
How to use the epoxy calculator?
Using the epoxy calculator, let’s calculate how much epoxy you need to coat your surface. Our calculator has the following fields:
- How thick do you want the epoxy coating?
- Coating: Enter the amount of epoxy coating you wish to apply, e.g., 1 in.
- What is the shape and size of your surface?
- Surface shape: Select if your surface is rectangular or circular.
- Surface length: Enter the length of your surface, e.g., 36 in.
- Surface width: Enter the width of your surface, e.g., 24 in.
- Diameter: If you select circular surface shape, you’ll need the diameter of your surface.
- Here’s how much epoxy resin you’ll need:
- Epoxy: Here, you will see the required volume of epoxy resin you need, based on your surface shape and dimensions, i.e., 478.75 ounces.
Note that the exact volume may differ if there are any indents or extrusions on the surface.
How to calculate the epoxy resin amount manually?
Here’s how you can manually calculate how much epoxy you need.
We use the following formula to calculate the volume of epoxy resin required for a rectangular surface.
The following formula is to calculate the volume of epoxy resin required for a circular surface.
where:
- Volume – Required amount of epoxy;
- length – Length of the rectangular surface where we want to apply the epoxy;
- width – Width of the same rectangular surface where we want the epoxy;
- radius – Half the diameter of the circular surface where we want the epoxy; and
- height – Desired thickness of our epoxy coating.
Let’s take the example of coating 1 in epoxy to a table with dimensions of 8 ft by 4 ft (or 96 in by 48 in).
- Converting feet into inches and placing the values in the formula:
- To convert cubic inches into gallons, we divide it by 231.
Now let’s take another example of calculating epoxy resin for a round table with a diameter of 32 in (or a radius of 16 inches). Here we will coat 2 inches of epoxy resin.
- Placing the values in the formula:
Volume = π × (32 / 2)² × 2
= 1608.5 in³
- To convert cubic inches into ounces, divide it by 1.80469.
Thus,