Eastsidepilot
Western Thunderer
Thought this was interesting, though I don't doubt yo' all knows 'bout it. 
Col.
Col.
3D printed plastic injection moulds.
- Thread starter Eastsidepilot
- Start date
Eastsidepilot
Western Thunderer
Although I'm not fully up to date with all things 3d and CAD etc. It seems to me that it could have some interesting possibilities in modelling.
But I suppose if your talking small numbers then you might as well print the stuff in the first place.
What also intrigued me was the plastic injection machine.
Col.
But I suppose if your talking small numbers then you might as well print the stuff in the first place.
What also intrigued me was the plastic injection machine.
Col.
Overseer
Western Thunderer
I liked the look of the injection moulding machine as well. I checked and they won’t send outside the US. They are easy enough to build at a much lower cost and cheap temperature controllers are available to take the guesswork out of getting consistent temp and results.
One of the more unusual presentation styles and narration.
Boyblunder
Western Thunderer
Colin, David S-Club-7 had a look at doing something like this last year. We couldn’t find any suitable flat bottom base plates for the future LL Mk2 so David drew some as an experiment and I printed them using standard resin. My printing effort was not a success, e.g. the spike holes didn’t go through and I now know that was mainly because the environment was too cold. David had some printed by Shapeways and they look fine. We would need in excess of 10,0000 I think so the next step could be to print in a mould making resin and get them stamped out in ABS. Previous searches found high temp resins were very expensive, up to £1,200 a litre at the time. The resin this weird guy is using is just £39 a litre from the usual suspects but only supposed to be good for 160c so it wouldn’t last long stamping ABS. There were some similar hand operated machines on eBay for £300-400 last year, can’t see any now. Hopefully someone else will be producing baseplates by the time we need them.
Bill Bedford
Western Thunderer
Mmm, 10000 is a lot of pieces and it might be worth looking at the cost of an aluminium mould. Printed moulds usually won't last more than about 50 prints before they degrade. I've heard, but haven't tried, that satisfactory moulds can be made from steel filled epoxy, but again they won't have the life of aluminium.