Hey guys i think i might of allready figured out how to do this but i'm not sure.. i figure someone here might be able to know the awnser..

me and a friend are trying to do nylon plastic molding.. we have no real idea where to start.. we have been making a prototype out of wood to be used in the mold..

right now where thinking of using plaster to make the mold then pour it with the polymer i have no idea where to get the raw polymer to use for this or even if polymer is the right word for it..

vac forming is not going to work with this project.

any help would be greatly appresated.

Jess

I do not think pouring into the mould will work unless it is flat. Even with that you will have problems with air bubbles.
Nylon is not nice to work with. For the most part nylon is hydrous (it holds water). When you heat it it gives off water as steam and causes bubbling. This can be minimized by preheating the nylon prior to moulding.
Depending upon what you are moulding you will probably need to perform this as a injection mould, not a pour mould. Pouring is more for resins and liquid metal. You can not make plastic flow that easy without it cooling too fast and skinning over.
You need to review your design and determine what you need to do and what material you need.
Thermoplastics will flow around 320-375 degrees. Thermoset polymers (resin type, 2+ materials poured together) are a one shot deal that hardens/sets with time.

mc_n_g

thanks for the info.. how hard is it to do injection molding? is this something a DIY homebrew type operation can do?

i was told on a differnt forum that i might want to use a urathane to make the mold and pour a epoxy glass plastic for it..

i am a totally newbie to this stuff as you can probably tell...

*bout to say screw it and make it out of alluminium*

Home Shop Machinist had a series on a small injection mold machine that someone described how they built it. If budget is a concern and you're not going to mass produce and sell the items then this might be interesting.

If you intend to mass produce, sell and quality is of importance then I would investigate having a professional injection molding company make the molds (estimated cost is probably around $3K for something the size of a cell phone case) for one of the commonly used injection molding machines. Once you own the molds you can job shop the work overseas....you can also have the molds made off-shore.

You also need to know what material, shot size, etc.
:cheers:

Once you own the molds you can job shop the work overseas....you can also have the molds made off-shore.

Och! A nife right thru the heart! ...... stager ...... stager...... fall......

I know the molds may be cheaper elsewhere but is the cost of injection molding driving it offshore as well. I always thought the the local injection molders were alright in the price range... The last thing I had quoted was about 10 cents a part for 100,000/3 month (which as I understand it is a small run for an injection molder). hard to compete with only a 10cent part. Isnt it?

What I've encountered in dealing with offshore vendors is that they will generally amortize the cost of the mold over a set number of parts over some period of time, so you can keep up-front costs low. They will also make you a mold for about 1/2 of what you would get stateside......

Check out lindsay books, theres a how to on an plastic injection molder setup, one of Vince Gingery's books. Dave Gingery's books are excellent even if your not going to build the lathe or machine shop stuff some of the detail and casting ideas are worth the purchase. You can easily cast low density and high density plastics, the easiest to get is plastic milk cartons. Its all in the book. Last i looked it was only $9.99us.

Some information on what you want to make would be helpful. It is possible that vacuum forming could be the answer to your question. (not with nylon of course, but many other plastics vacuum form well)

Vacuum forming is relatively easy and inexpensive to do compared to injection molding.

Darrell Hall
Deco Plastics, Inc.
Houston, Texas

It would help to know what you wanted to cast and what its use would be. This way we can determin the most suitable material and also the best moulding method. There are DIY injection moulding plans availiable on the net, but these plungers are slow to use.
I guess it all comes down to how many of the parts you need per day.

I recently finished reading a book on plastic forming methods and was very surprized at how many methods and variable there was in casting items.

When you mention vacuum forming, this method usually referes to shaping a flat sheet of plastic. The finished item will be hollow and not solid. Casting nylons usually requires a mould that will cast the entire object instead of just one side like vacuum forming. To cast an item in nylon will produce a solid item.
Then there is rotational moulding where beads of plastic are put into the mould and the mould is rotated in all directions while been heated. The easter egg principle. This will produce fully skinned item that is hollow.

Dont ever think " bout to say screw it " It may take some research but in the end you will get what you want and at the price you want it.

I run Nylon 66 at work, 500 +degrees Farnh. to keep things flowing, You could build a small hyd operated machine with heaters. but as Mc N G say's you will also have to dry the nylon and vent the gases/steam or you could potentially explode what you are trying to mold.
I have been wanting to build my own also, I would go hydraulic if it were me....
just my 2 cents.

Can you post some pictures of the part you want to mold, or a sketch? I design injection molded parts all day long! I'd be happy to look at it for you and see if I can offer any advice.

But you also need to tell us how many parts you want to make, and what kind of application it is -- do you want it to be plastic because of the impact, electrical, strength, or appearance properties?

....I have been wanting to build my own also, I would go hydraulic if it were me....

All the big commercial presses are hydraulic.... except for the very latest injection mold machines, which are totally electric, servo driven! And considering the expertise in the CNC community here, a servo driven injection molder would seem to actually be easier to do and more garage compatible -- no messy hydraulic fluid.

If you go the hydraulic route, www.surpluscenter.com seems to have a TON of hydraulic components (pumps, valves, tubing, actuators, etc.) for cheap. If you go the servo route, that same website has an unreal deal on 1kw servos right now -- $40. And they work with Rutex drives!

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13909
http://www.surpluscenter.com/item.asp?UID=2005101400045311&item=10-2210

For a DIY injection mold machine, you'd probably need three servos. One to drive the platten (via a simple 4-bar linkage), one to drive the injection screw to push the plastic shot, and the third motor to rotate the screw. No matter if you do hydraulic or electric, I would think that software would be a problem. I don't know if there's any equivalent to Mach2 for injection molds. Anyone else heard of such a thing?

Servo driven injeciton molds are truly top-dollar, expen$ive machines that when purchased, are usually touted on the top of a molder's line card, or when you talk to them. The reason is that the motion profile can be tuned VERY precicely. A vendor visited my office recently and said that if you place a piece of paper between the platens, the machine can detect the difference in displacement and back the platen off, or compensate for the clamping force! Hydraulic machines don't usually have such finesse and I've been told they usually only detect something's wrong if a part gets stuck or crushed in the mold (or an arm). Here's a writeup, that explains why servo driven presses are better for commercial use:

http://www.4spe.org/training/products/0192sampbk4.pdf

It's no big deal to run hydraulic lines and air compressors in a commercial molding shop. They switch to servos because it's better. But for us DIY'ers it seems that the servo route would be easier too!

Actually, I've been thinking a lot about what it would take to build an injection mold, DIY style. I know there are kits to convert your drill press (temporarily) into an injection mold:

http://cgi.ebay.com/BUILD-A-PLASTIC-INJECTION-MOLDING-MACHINE_W0QQitemZ7554310561QQcategoryZ42148QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

But I have seen pictures of the results and haven't seen any that can do any real work yet. If I didn't already have so many projects, I'd attempt to build my own. Maybe someday. On the other hand, you could just go to ebay and buy something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Injection-Molder-Emco-1-4-oz-Model-250-vacuum-former_W0QQitemZ7552541652QQcategoryZ45037QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

or this if you are more serious:

http://cgi.ebay.com/TRUEBLOOD-50-Ton-Horiz-Vert-Injection-insert-Molder_W0QQitemZ7551713363QQcategoryZ45037QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Well a servo system would definetly give you better control over the process, what kind of tonnage can they create? I guess it's all in the ratio of the screw and such?

I don't know that there's a limit to the tonnage of a servo driven injection mold machine. Here's one manufacturer I turned up in a quick search that goes up to 660ton presses. I would not be surprised to find 2000 ton presses made with servos too. With an injection machine that size, you can drive a forklift between the plattens!

http://www.sumitomopm.com/dynpage.asp?page=ses_series

That webpage has a lot of good explanations about servo driven technology and how they do it.

I have made some small molded parts from scrap delrin. The only tools are an oven, a manual hydraulic press and the mold. I will take some pictures and post in a new thread.
Regards, Ray

I have been making injection molds and doing injection molding since the early 80's.
China almost put me under because most of my customers were large corporations and they sent their work overseas. I decided to fight back and changed the way I did business. I got creative and started making molds so that they were simple, cheap, yet still did the job. My company was a huge success with millions of dollars in sales.
I say this only to say, I know something about this subject. There are very low cost table top molding machines you can buy to DIY.
Even though the industry itself frowns on it, there are some very low cost ways to build molds that work. As time allows, I would be more than happy to answer questions if you like.

I just signed up and noticed this topic. Did you ever get your molding questions fully answered? This happens to be an area I have worked in for years.
Thanks,

Kevin

Hi Kevin,
I just bought a sinker, I do prototyping on the side. I've made small molds for liquid urethane (slow) with good results. I've seen/been around injection molds and am anxious to learn. The parts I'll be making the molds for are fairly simple and about 15 gr. each. Looking to have multi cavities... We want to inject pellitized urethane and eventually polycarbonate (2 different customers). I'm not going to try to satisfy a market but need to make several thousand parts for marketing purposes. The liquid takes about 40 minutes to cure; if I throw everything i have into it I might make 200 parts a day. I'm carving the poly (complex, organic, 2 sided shape) that takes 4 hrs. to machine 24. As I said, both jobs will require thousands of parts to send to the various entities involved.

Haven't really started looking for a press yet. I would imagine you have lots of resources for them. Care to share?
Thanks,
Doug

The first thing I would recommend is to buy/make a MUD frame when you make your first mold. This will substantially reduce costs for future molds. I run lots of 3-1/4 x 3-3/4", 5"x5", 5"x8", 6.5"x8", & 7"x14" MUD sets. The most popular MUD set on the market is the 5"x8" MUD insert that fits into their U-style frame. I use literally tons of these every year. The dimensions for the MUD master frames and inserts can be viewed on the DME website http://www.masterunitdie.com
If you have a print of your part I can give you some pointers on building the mold.
Also, as far as the press goes, one of the lowest cost, versatile and dependable molding presses is the 30 ton Arburg molding presses. These you can find all over for anywhere from $500 to $5000 for an older one. The best places to get one will be word of mouth from others in the plastics field, or from auctions. If you can, find an auction that has only a press or 2 along with other unrelated items would be best. This means that you won't likely be bidding against plastics machinery dealers. Of course any press that is priced right and works is worth looking at regardless of brand. I have Engel, Arburg, VanDorn & Sumitomo presses and can't complain about any of them.
I hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the reply and the link. I'll look things over tonight after work. And especially, thank you for your offer of help. I have dxf files and such I'll pdf and send out to you.

Thanks again,
Doug

There are very low cost table top molding machines that you can buy on some local stores or on many online stores...





_________________
Rapid Tooling (http://www.metroplastics.com)

It isn't clear from your original post whether you are looking to make a few or many copies of this thing you want to make. Since you mention using a plaster mold, I am assuming this isn't going to be mass produced. Also is nylon required or could it be made of another material like urethane?

Since you are in research mode Freeman Supply has a bunch of online videos that deal with molding and casting. They may or may not be directly applicable to what you are trying to do but I am sure you will learn a lot there. http://www.freemansupply.com/

bob

Unfortunatley for the US you will not beat the Chinese for injection molding at this point. That's either getting a mold made or having a large part run or both. They have five guys running a mill. Two with calculators watching a print telling two guys running the x and y axis where to dial and a fifth maintaining the machine and taking care of the coolant and oils. They pay them each the equiviliant of 3.00 USD a day. They do they take care of their daily needs dormitory style. But the common worker might go up to three or four months before they get vacation to go home. The majority of the processes on a conventional plastic injection mold are done that way over there manually. The rest are plunge EDM or CNC machining. That's how the cost is so low. China has been hit hard recently by the downturn. A lot of factories have closed there doors.

Phoodieman

I would have to COMPLETELY disagree with phoodieman. I've been doing Injection Molding for the last 13 years and I guest lecture at Purdue University where I teach the fundamentals of Injection Molding and Design for Manufacturability.
What kills me is people who listen to others say you cant compete with China. But they forget freight cost, running multiple production cycles in order to maintain inventory, etc. You have to have product to sell and you have to have product being shipped to maintain inventory. Not to mention the distance and language barrier. There are some cases where this is true but a blanket statement that you can't beat China is simply FALSE. I know this as fact because it's what i do.
If a part is designed with manufacturing in mind then there is NO REASON you can't have it made in the States.
Also don't forget about all the products that are stolen in China and sold cheaper on the world market. Once you ship your product to China it is no longer yours and they have and will steal it if they see a potential to make a profit.

Sorry about my rant but I believe in American jobs and keeping America employed.

I have seen first hand, at least twenty molds in a row come out of China. And if you knew anything about molds and looked at these you would flip at the price. These guys can turn a complex mold in sixty days. Ship time is six weeks from China on a boat. The freight cost is rolled into the margin. This is how committed these Chinese factory reps are. They assume an anglo name to do business with the US so that their Asian names don't confuse their American contacts. I have personally had Skype conversations with these reps and they are very fluent in English. I don't do lectures at colleges, but I am as you might say "In the trenches". I know what it takes to make these molds. I've made at least thirty aluminum or P20 molds personally. I have seem the smile on a salesman's face when he has sent a mold to China knowing how his comission check is going to look. I'm all for the US and if I owned a company my model might be different. It's just that I've seen how learned owners of company's see where the production value dollar (or yuan) is at this point. But I stress ..at this point... There is going to be a backlash. This is my prediction... world economies being relativley stable..... the significant mold business will return to the US in ten to fifteen years. (Unless there are radical technological changes).

Phoodieman

What are the advantaegs/disadvantages of a PDA compared to a inconsequential journal notebook?
I've carried throughout a 3x5 notebook in my pocket conducive tk a few years. I run through it to victual trail of to-do lists, shopping lists, notes to ymsself, etc.

It seems to make de of ok to save me, but I'm taking intto ocnisderation getting a PDA instead. What can a PDA do outdo than a notebook? rAe there things that are easier in a notebvook?

Thansk!