Do-It-Yourself Instant Earmolds

I purchased the Radians Custom Ear Plug kit for about $10 and tried wrapping the silicone around the tube, total failure.

I fill my ears with the putty, let it cure for 15 minutres then after a full 3 hour cure I drill the acoustic channels with a 1/8" bit.

How do you keep RIC receivers to stay in the drilled-out holes? Radians Custom Ear Plug kit?

I use acoustic tubes, avoid RIC due to broken wires om MX 30, which are junk. I have difficulty making the little elbow fittings stay in place so I shove the tubes into the earmolds, all the way, then trim them.

You might need to stick the RIC in the soft epoxy prior to the ten minute cure, pull them out and drill through the molded hole.

I have no experience with Radians Ear Plug Kit. I used epoxy resin with molds of 2-component silicone paste. Works, but I like silicone paste better than the resin and just use that since.

Receiver-in-canals are indeed al lot more hassle than the thinwires or tubes for BTE. I find it near impossible to drill an air vent next to the thick tubes or receivers in flexible materials.

However, if I don’t use them, I drill a small enough hole and the rectangle of the receivers pushes some of the silicone away making the mold fit tighter.

So I switched from drilling to directly putting the mold material around the receiver topped with a small dome and a plastic stick of 0.8mm diameter. The results are reasonable, but the Phonak receivers have a bent at the end that make reinserting them troublesome.

So now I’ll try another approach: Put it just around the smaller dome. The silicone glues to eachother quite well. I just wonder whether the fit will be tight enough after curing without the extra expansion from inserting the RIC into the hole.