Home made Injection Mould will not work for me
September 16th, 2010 | 
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Hi all, I wanted to see if I could injection mould a cheap little plastic dust pan at home. I was successful in making a concrete mold by using a taped plastic prototype and clay. Turns out that the Smooth-on.com product smooth cast 45 does form the cast, but, it takes way to long to make each piece enough to make any money selling the final pieces. With that in mind, I figured I would try to make a home made injection mould by welding soft iron sheets together. I use the Harbor Frieght sheet metal shears, as well as a chop saw, and they all worked well enough for me to cut the proper sized pieces. The only problem is that the Low Density Poly Ethelyne ( LDPE ) is Way too viscous to flow into any metal form that I make. You will see from the video that even though the melting point of LDPE is 248 F, it does not easily flow into the mould without high presure. If anyone has any suggestion, please feel free to let me know how I can make an injection mold piece at my house.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
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Try polypropylene 30-melt flow rating
Stay off the Meth man!
I would think it would be faster and easier to use vacuum molding for a home use.. buying sheet plastic like you have there is usable.
You’re a hard boss man!!
an injection mold is going to cost you thousands of dollars maybe even $100 000. my father had one that was used for making 5l icecream buckets and the whole thing weighed hundreds of pounds. it was made of super hard steel and a special alloy of bronze.
you have a good idea and plan. you should check if theres a patent on that type of thing. if not go for it and you might make some money down the road good luck.
I think you are taking the wrong approach to this. As a hobby inventor, you should first look into a CNC machine. The X2 Mini Mill is a good place to start. Cheap, reliable and can replicate parts build in CAD. You can then cut molds on your CNC machine. Once you have molds, you can injection mold in your garage using a hand or hydrological press. Lots of tech done on this, start with Gingery Press for the basic machine. As an inventor and hobbyist, a CNC machine is your best investment.
A friend of mine at work had an idea for a simple rock shovel. Turns out someone already had the patent but he mentioned that he already knew how to link up with factories in China that could whip out any such product given a spec. Don’t know how you would protect your patent in China but that was his business plan. One way or another you’ve got to link in to an established industrial base if you’re going to avoid having to reinvent civilization itself…
thanks for the info,i am trying to figure out a way to make a homemade moulding set up for my paintball landmines,i was about to order some plastic pellets from ebay but if it won’t melt better then you just saved me some money. thanks again