You DON'T NEED an Expensive Mold to Make PLASTIC PARTS | Vacuum Casting | Serious Engineering - Ep21

Polyurethane vacuum casting is a method for making high quality prototypes or low volumes of parts formed from inexpensive silicone molds. Copies made in this way show great surface detail and fidelity to the original pattern. Have you ever used this process to make your parts?

can't platinum-cure rubber molds withstand potentially hundreds of resin castings, as opposed to only 15 to 20 for tin-cure molds?

Whenever I tried molding in UV curable resins from 3d printed, the plastic wouldn't harden at all.

sorry after watching this, it takes way too long and required many expensive machines to make just 1 simple prototype, not worth doing it.

it is not very clear to me what exactly you are offering: the service, the silicone mold material and or the casting resins? I am interested in the resins, SIKA?? do you also sell resins? where I purchase a sample? Thank you so much for the video.

i need to cast some hard rubber, but dont know hwat to use, can u help me out?

In transparent lens part, how to prevent pinholes...?

Yanks are Blank well maybe not the ones who would watch this.

Just want to make beams to replace wood.

Out of curiosity, whats the benefit of vacuum casting if it only takes 10 hours to complete a 3D printed model? Is the 3D printed model simply too rough to send as a sample to a client?

BORING. 😞

great

You don't need an expensive mold.. proceeds to the Robocop cave for curing

How do you navigate your SLA printed parts inhibiting your silicone? I've found coating my SLA printed parts with InhibitX works but it's a unreliable technique and adds a lengthy and costly step in in prototyping.

this mold is use for warm plastic? please reply

Yeah but to go through that process not worth it, if I wanted a plastic item to build cost to much for it would be worth

Brilliant

If a town can do laser-polishing, water-milling, metal-3D-printer, plastic-3D-printer (minus-one usage for paint-dye design printing)... and needs a small production run of things. Start with screw-bolt-nut structure, print on structure(torsional bias preloading), mill, polish, print design. What size and cost machine is applicable.?

3D-optical scanner (mobile phone similar), mould creation for injection-moulding techniques with vacuum-nipples. Vaccum draws injection in vectors(in the mould) to prevent weak corners... additional quicker run.

Star Rapid has been no help and showed no initiative during the manufacturing and quote process.
I have not spoken to one English representative. The point of contact I’ve spoken with is an Asian lady that only contacts me on the time zone of China which is night time.
She also was not any help when I inquired about DFM feedback and Consultation with an in house engineer.

Geez this is so cheesy

Too much unnecessary information that gave me borderline headache.

My god man, comedy is really not your forté. But kudos for the information in explaining this process.

I like you

Nice Job done... Amazing Quality...

Way too complicated for diy

Very nice. I do silicone moulding of small parts like knobs and so on for old classic synthesizers. I don't even have a vacuum chamber. I first coat the part to be moulded on one side and let the bubbles rise out. Then I turn the part over and complete the mould. My stuff is not as complex as what you are doing here and I'm interested to improve my process

I have been printing positives, given them a clear coat of UV resin (to remove the printing lines), then pour with mold rubber, then pour with resinb to get a positive. This is much quicker and easier as it cuts out one step.

Wouldn't it be great if "someone" developed a low cost silicon product that one could use to make molds for aluminum casting that would be robust enough to cast 30 or so pieces.
But as far as I know there is not.
Which means that my poor 6040 CNC hobby mill is going to have to just suck it up and get the job done as best it can.
It is an 8" by 12" (approx) piece to be mounted on a very ornate wooden cross.
We have got ongoing power blackouts here where I am But at least we get a 2 to 3 hour notification beforehand so its a bit of a workaround situation.
MANY MANY very low material removal tool-paths all shorter than 2 hour run time.
Have not bought the material yet but it will have to be annealed to be easily machined.
But there will have to be a test run on perspex or something at much higher feed rates to see what goes on.
PLEASE SOMEONE - FIND US A CAST-ABLE RESIN THAT WILL HANDLE HEAT... PLEASE...

Love it. Great job. Keep up the great work.

Some constructive criticism - if I don't learn something new in 45 seconds of a video, I cut my losses and click away. Don't me that to be insulting, but instructive.

Hi Gordon, Why you did not create MOLD in SLA rather than PRODUCTS in master patterns part? Would be faster that you created negative mold of the product in SLA and afterward poor the polyurethane? Also did you use RTV silicone for mold? You were curing for 14 hours in chamber? My mold is finished with accelator in 2 hours- perfect condition. In overall, thank you for showing this you are the best teacher of rapid manufacturing. Greetings from Croatia. Also I have question regarding molds, do you know by any chance is there a mold made of silicone that is strong/rigid enough to survive high temperature>? For example I am creating molds in Aluminum and Copper with CNC machine and the price per each mold is pretty high and time per each mold takes 5 hours or more. Basically I need something faster for my Silicone label business. Please help.

I want to work for this guy, probably an awesome boss!

I’d love to see a video on how to apply texture using paint/spray paint.

You don't need an expensive mold to make plastic parts. Really. you need an expensive machine set up to do that for yah

Would it be possible to extend the 3d printing part of the process to include the all the "support structures" that are hand-made at the moment?

Beautiful moulds. How long can you store the urethane without Argon or is that not recommended at all? We never did this step and I do remember some occasional issues with seemingly aerated pockets that could have been it foaming.

I've used Star Prototypes for years whenever I need to make very small prototypes at better quality than 3D printing can achieve. They are great when I need 10. But I'd really like a low cost solution when I need to produce 500-1000. At this point, NRE charges quickly go into the stratosphere. There seems to be almost zero cost difference between soft aluminum tooling and hardened steel, despite the fact that machine time should be a lot less.

Perhaps you would care to make a video explaining how to make low cost limited production parts. Especially when the parts are fairly large, like a 12" square clam shell enclosure for a PCB. If you need to make 500 of something, and you have to pay $10,000 - $20,000 for tooling, that is $20 - $40 per part. More often than not, this turns out to be the actual killer for small businesses looking to try out innovative products in the market. Any solutions for this segment of the industry?

Vacuum for casting plastics? You sure is not pressure? As vacuum makes bubbles big, same as in your video with silicon in vacuum. You need pressure to remove bubbles! I watched the pouring part 4 times and still it wasn't explained normally how vacuum can help here!

Have you ever made a copy of a complex plastic blow moulded tube? I have a classic car from 1990 that should have a cold air inlet pipe to the air filter housing - this has a narrow rectangular opening that sits in the grill just inboard of the headlight, this then twists through a couple of angles to take it being the headlight and then rearwards and into the air box itself where the moulding changes shape as the connection is round.The part is not too big overall just complex and the original part was quite weak and either broke or was replaced by an aftermarket induction kit. As part of the owners club I think that I could get sales for between 8 and 10 of these depending on price etc. Thanks for any advice, Iam based in the UK if this matters

Seeing these things like this made going to uni for engineering so worth it, I only wish looking back that I’d went for mechanical instead of chemical engineering, it’s just so much broader and has a lot more applications.

This process still looks like it's pretty expensive and labor intensive. It may not be quiet as expensive as traditional mold making, but I can virtually guarantee you it costs more than $5000 to get a mold like this made.

Quite stream lined !

this seems to be the more expensive method from the usual model shop approach...

Feels like a pretty long intro

Do you know how the vinyl armrests on the herman miller chairs are made? I would like to use that material to do small scale overmolding for cables at home. It is so very durable. Scratches just wipe off.

You might not need expensive molds ^^ but these mega vacuum temperature controlled resin mixing and pouring chambers doesn't look cheap either 😅

awww. I'm neither serious, nor an engineer. guess i cant watch then...

Typical durations e2e?

I just realized I met this guy while visiting Shenzhen. His work pieces appeared to be very high quality.