Patent ID: 7125236

Claim:
An apparatus for molding a replica comprising: a mother mold having a mold cavity corresponding to the outer contour of an article to be duplicated, said mother mold being formed from a transparent cured product of a photo-curable liquid silicone rubber composition, a means for casting or filling the mold cavity with a photo-curable liquid resin, and a means for irradiating light to the photo-curable liquid resin from outside the mother mold thereby curing the photo-curable resin; wherein the transparent cured product of the mother mold is cured from a photo-curable liquid silicone rubber composition comprising (i) 100 parts by weight of an organopolysiloxane and (ii) 0.01 to 5 parts by weight of a photo-initiator, the organopolysiloxane (i) comprising: (A) 30 to 90% by weight of an organopolysiloxane of the following average compositional formula (1): R a R 1 b SiO (4-a-b)/2 (1) wherein R, which is identical or different, is a substituted or unsubstituted monovalent hydrocarbon group free of an aliphatic unsaturated bond or an alkoxy group; R 1 , which is identical or different, is a photo-reactive group selected from a (meth)acryloyl-containing group, vinyloxyalkyl group, and epoxy-containing group; and letters a and b are positive numbers satisfying 1.90≦a<2.40, 0.0003≦b≦0.10, and 1.90<a+b≦2.40, the organopolysiloxane containing at least two photo-reactive groups in a molecule and having a viscosity of 100 to 1,000,000 centipoise at 25° C., and (B) 10 to 70% by weight of a silicone resin comprising R p R 1 q SiO 1/2 units (M), SiO 2 units (Q), and/or XSiO 3/2 units (T) wherein R and R 1 are as defined above, letters p and q each are equal to 0, 1, 2 or 3 and satisfy p+q=3, X is selected from R and R 1 , the molar ratio M/(Q+T)=0.6 to 1.2, and the molar ratio R 1 /Si=0.01 to 0.10, the silicone resin (B) being soluble in component (A).