Let´s talk about moulding -shapes and materials-

During the process of research on this growing material, turned out that the material and shape (although a little bit less) matters for the fungi to grow properly.
This last months I've been working with different types of moulds. Mainly silicone based moulds. Also with glass and plastic like PP or PE from recused food containers.
It turnes out that the best performance was given by the silicone moulds that are used in the food industry. Not sure if there is a specific type of name but the ones I was using where for making ice.
I'm pretty sure the ones that are used for baking would also be well suited for this task.
There is a couple of photos showing the thickness of the walls.
I found that this thickness becomes important because a good performance is given when it's allowing the mycelium to breath in and out having an exchange of gases.
It it also important to consider that the mould should be compressing the shape enough to not be too deformed on the way. In the case of this squared shaped mould, the samples wouldn't end precisely having a squared shape, because of the pressure applied to the samples.

In the case of the second photo, the shape was helping a lot more on keeping the form, but of course that being this shape a sphere, keeping the shape is way more simple.
Although, the complication on this mould was the two parts assembling together. Because at the time of filling, the main material isn't very sticked to each other (that's what mycelium will do the following days) so it becomes tricky to flip one side on top of the other without spilling half of the filling on the table.
The last positive comment on this sphere mould is that whenever the immaculate substrate is contained in from all it's surroundings, tends to grow better, faster and with a neater surface.