Reply to: How do I create plastic moulds

[vetran]

alginate (dentists mould stuff) seems to be the preferred thing for animate objects.

[RSoles]

Latex is fine. Unless you're allergic of course.

[doodab]

It's safe to paint yourself with latex though, isn't it?

[doodab]

Make a good, cheap, upgradeable sheet plastic vacuum former

Not sure if its this sort of thing, but could do the trick.

Tired of buying cheap plastic crap? Now you can make your own!

Sounds ideal

[mooshld]

Make a good, cheap, upgradeable sheet plastic vacuum former

Not sure if its this sort of thing, but could do the trick.

[RSoles]

I seem to remember a story about a girl losing most of her fingers trying to make a cast of her hands.
She hadn't realised how much heat fibreglass/resin gives out as it sets and hadn't planned ahead how she was going to get her clasped hands out of the bucketful of resin.
Must have been pretty horrific.

[TheFaQQer]

looks like back to my day jobs then.

i'll try the suggestions out.

cheers

css_jay99

All of them??

[css_jay99]

looks like back to my day jobs then.

i'll try the suggestions out.

cheers

css_jay99

[Sockpuppet]

wax?

[RSoles]

Try a 3-d printer?

[gingerjedi]

Resin casting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[doodab]

Yes, injection moulding is expensive as the tooling costs are very high.

I think you can probably do something with a rubber mould and then use that to cast resin.

Latex & Gelflex Moulding - Casting & Modelling - Model Shop - Fred Aldous

Casting Resin - Casting & Modelling - Model Shop - Fred Aldous

[css_jay99]

Mmmm.

Injection moulding.

Think in the >£10k region for that sort of thing.

i am looking at simple £20 type solutions !

[css_jay99]

Like this? NSFW

good thing I hovered on that link first ! before I lost my job!

A clue of what you're tring to do would be helpful. Is it to make a full scale model of a tank or to manufature your own Mr Potato Head ?

Making moulds of small objects is best done with fibreglass, which you're not interested in

I was trying to build a few things e.g:-
1) A small tray the size of a keyboard
2) A cup holder a certain shape ...

basically the starting points will be :-
1) making a cast/mould of an existing object
either by (a) pressing an existing object against a putty like substance to make imprints that will then harden up
or (b) using my hand to fashion a putty like substance that will then harden up
2) Then pouring some form of material or liquid into that cast to harden up
3) Then pulling that hardened object out of the cast and then shaped with something like a dremel ......

I dont know much about fibre glass and I only objected to it assuming it was going to be something like laying down some sort of mesh and laboriously slapping glue over it ....which is kind of time consuming .....

[doodab]

tooling for plastic mouldings

e.g. also to creating moulds of existing objects


css_jay99

It depends on the type of object & plastic. Vacuum forming you can do at home reasonably cheaply. For injection moulding you need to get tools made i.e. blocks of metal machined into the right shapes + there is usually a mechanical element involved to get the cores in and out so it's not something you can easily take on yourself. There are places that will do the whole tool manufacture + moulding job for a fee although you will still need CAD drawings of your part I expect.

You might do better to look at a 3D printer.