Thread: Epoxy Granite Molds?
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13-02-2014 #1
Just an idea, would Epoxy granite be any good to make injection molds out of. The idea would be to mill an inverse mold from an easily machine material, maple wood, plastic or dense foam and then take a cast using the expoy granite to make the tool? You could then make some pretty sizeable molds on a pretty lightweight machine.
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13-02-2014 #2
Are you talking thermoplastics which are injected at temperatures which, I suspect, are above what the epoxy would tolerate, also the thermal characteristics would probably not give the required cooling rate to the component.
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13-02-2014 #3Spelling mistakes are not intentional, I only seem to see them some time after I've posted
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13-02-2014 #4
Seen it and very impressed, thats where the idea started. I always thought the mold material needed to be metal. The problem is those 3d printers cost a fortune to buy and run. That mold likely cost more than a £1000 just to print and I doubt it will last more than a few cycles. Still very exciting tech in time I guess the cost will come down.
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13-02-2014 #5
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14-02-2014 #6
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18-02-2014 #7
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18-02-2014 #8
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18-02-2014 #9
I would think the terrible surface is down to the 3D printing.
All the 3D printers that use the extrusion technique (think glue gun) produce a surface that leaves a lot to be desired. I'm guessing that as the part took 22 hours to print the nozzle on that printer is very fine which has resulted in a surface finish that isn't too bad. The little home 3D printers have much larger nozzles and the print quality is awful IMHO. Depending on the material the object is printed with you can sometimes wash it with solvent (acetone) to smooth out the print but then you lose some fidelity. The granular binding technique generally leaves a better surface finish to 3D printed parts and can even be used to make metal parts but if you think that machine is expensive I wouldn't go looking for a price for granular binding.
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