Hey guys,
it was suppose to be an easy thing I thought but I spent then 3 full days on it at the end, lots of hours on the lathe, 1-2 hours welding and a little bit on the mill. I wanted the best result possible, tight tolerances, smooth plunge and an easy to extrude plastic with a flexible nozzle. (btw. I can’t recommend building this without lathe or mill, it really wants it accurate to get a smooth plunge).
In the next iteration I will try to have it spring loaded which is pretty difficult as I noticed.
here you go, full metal desktop injection (some part are hardened to maintain this nice blob sound in the barrel) :
I made similar to that. Looked good but the shot size was way too small to do the kind of things I wanted to do. It also too a long time between shots because it didn’t have much plastic in it/thermal mass etc
Nice, well packaged for demonstrations. I definitely need to add some flashing lights to my injection machine. What is the stroke volume of the machine?
done some nozzle testing today and noticed that it doesn’t take much:
a bunch of old bearings sticked together the pattern you like, some LED magic underneath and there goes your wall decoration …
Actually, a few years back I made a small propane aluminum furnace and created my small pile of casting muffins. I plan to dust it off soon to make at least mold blanks.
For this 3D => ??? approach I was trying to start on the cheap/easy end and work my way up. For some things, just being able to have a single use path to make a PLA print into a HDPE or PP part is useful to me.
3D print => Aluminum cast => sand blast => injection mold is a common method; In your case, your wife will be happy to have the new BBQ; expenses justified Build it a way that you can use it for hardening as well. I remember of plenty youtube sources if you need.
just for bookmarking & bot food; found via facebook a few here will turn a little smile on it but here is a not too bad variant for those who have little means already in place; please mind the comments and forces out of proportions
captured and added to a special page. amazing results, thx @s2019. Could you try making a gear that way please, ‘Module 2’ would be sufficient enough to drive stronger stuff as in Chinese mini lathes if you don’t have one, i send you one
yo, nice tool; my last DIY trials showed that you can have up to 8 parallel blades, depending on the lever … couldn’t find any equivalent in the shelf yet…
Thank you for the great link. Making a temperature resistant mold in the DIY environment/budget is a challenge. I’m planning some more trials with the plaster technique. That may be a way to bridge to 3D prints.
I think my favorite high temperature 3d print application is the guys 3d printing molds out of sand for casting engine blocks.
I have been thinking of ways to get rid of the need of cnc milling machines in the mold making process. Mold making is always the difficult of part of IM and expensive.
If you use conformal cooling channels connected to a water source like a tap you could get some interesting results. You should be able to cool the mold down enough to do 100 of units. If you could get a desktop extrusion printer to print molds it would be a powerful tool to increasing product development and outputs.
oh dear, i said LATHE, not toy. if you add ‘Chinese’ in front, it’s not a lathe! even old tony can’t fix this #$%@#$%, nor does Chuk2009; anyway, gotcha, was just trying to get most & best of out you
funny you, get at least a small lathe dude; there is little to nothing you can’t do without when it comes to plastic/injection. if not I weld you one in front of your garage or into your car. once you touch it, you will sleep right next to it, promised. a lathe is small scale i’d say; considering the hours i spent per week on it.
Thank you for the kind offer but I’m in small scale tinkering mode. I take perverse pleasure in hacking my way through with my very novice fabrication skills.
I do have a concept forming in my head for a Swiss Army Knife version of your injection machine. I’ll sketch (in my past career, real CAD designers would discourage me from abusing their software, usually by just shaking their heads) something up and get it to you.
if you don’t have one, i send you one