Delw

Mike water based degreasers like, zap, simple green ,grease lightning you shouldnt use on alum. Dave(vodkaman) can probly give the chemical properties. What happens is these chemicals will etch the alum like an acid, the black your getting is a type of burn and the plastic will stick to the alum., if your fast you shouldnt have any problems. I wouldnt recommened using them at all on alum products. if you do use them have a bucket of clean water right next to it and rince IMMED. then blow dry them off immed. Personally I wouldnt reccomend useing any of them. we used to wash out commercial parts in water based degreaser years ago(before molds) to get the cooland off of them. one time I left some in a bucket for 45 mins while talking on the phone, came back and they were black and discolored.. we ended up having to make them all over again. Delw

Dave do you have any pics or a better description of where its not filling? Also what mold? the 5.5rwst 4.5rwst or the 4" ring worm 3 cavity? here are some things that may help you. DONT PRE HEAT ALUM MOLDS You'll ruin them and its not necc. maybe 1-2 cycles in the mold with hot plastic at the most but ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER HEAT SOURCE. when you suck the plastic up make sure you hold the tip at a 45 degree angle or so upright and GENTALY push the plunger this will help get any air out of the injector thats in there. YOU DONT NEED TO CYCLE ANY INJECTOR, as your doing nothing but creating more problems. if you have a cold injector and do this the plastic will bugger up along the sides and you will get little buggers in your baits, NO AMOUNT OF Recylcing will melt the buggers. If your doing it on a production level it does help to sit the injector in your prsto pot to keep it warm, however DONT PUT IT IN A OVEN OR ON A HEATING ELEMENT as you can ruin it. Room tempuature molds and injectors should work with no problems. as far as plastic being hot enough, try not to rely ona temp guage as every plastic is different as well at the hardness and softness the plastics will be a different temp to cook it properly. if it pours nice with out burning its more than hat enough for an injector., You can use a colder/thicker plastic in an injector. 2 main things for shooting, make sure your plastic is hot enough and make sure you have no air sucked into the injector( purge it as described above). you may have to shoot 1-2 times so the mold warms up a tad better. however every mold I shoot I never preheat, they usuallly shoot right the first time. I do run my plastic hotter than most as its runny. as far as reheating old worms, Not trying to be an ass, but your wasting your time in most case's and causing nothing but problems. old worms smoke, they tend to bubble and the plastic flat out sucks. if your plastic is smoking too much it will cause voids as the smoke has to go somewhere and if there is no vent its going to push on plastic.. Hope that helps, call the shop if you cant get it worked out I will be more than happy to help you figure out the problem. Delw Delw

That would work, or you could pour a circle of plastic and make something like a cookie cutter kinda to cut the tails, we had guys do that in the past, there should be some pics or post up from around 2004/2005? Vodka man might remember that one.

Sticky plastic generally means your plastic isnt mixed enough. what happens is the hardener settles and the softener is on top. so you get to much softener causing a sticky plastic. then your plastic will get progressivly harder the more you use of it do to ,not the right amount of softener in it. and too much hardener will also give you a sticky bait. other things that can make a plastic sticky is what type of additives you put in it, mainly has to do with some scents.

The "BEST" is a pretty hard one to describe as everyone has a different view of whats "BEST" Polyone is the BEST as far as clearity and not turning yellow, but as far as price its expensive compared to others. Years ago(4-5) Spike it has a really good one or used to make a really good plastic but again like poly one is was very expensive( they also make a cheaper one as well, or used to.) Were talking BEST as being quality plastic NOT counting in price. you can get plastics made that are the best but its expensive, unless your buying truck loads. M-f is under the above 2 then everything else is under that. Keep in mind again were talking best as in quality NOT PRICE. As far as Stretch most plastics are all the same, the stretch is all in the hardness. You can't throw in the stretchy stuff like strikes kings plastic as thats a hole nother ball game all together and doesnt use the same compounds. as far as super soft again thats kinda irrelivant as you can easly add softener to any plastic and get the softness you want. All plastics are pretty much created equal as far as makinig/producing a bait. some have different smells some have different feels, some smoke more than others, some turn yellow etc etc, but you still get the same end result.. Delw

The slim stiks are pretty close to the org slim senkos, both in 4in and 5 inch, off the top of my head I think the 5" is around 5/16 dia. Delw

yes the side wings not the tail, that mold was the first batch that went out( I can tell by the cuts LOOKS terrible lol), I can tell by the undercuts along the bait bottom. tails and side wings the face was stepped down .004 in certain places Delw

Bill that mold is pretty old, it will poor 10 times better if you drill a 1/16th hole in the bottom of each wing. both sides.

DINP is Softener its NOT worm oil worm oil is a completely different ball game, worm oil will evaporate and it will turn yellow as there is NO UV inhibators in worm oil. worm oil is also alot thinner than Softener aka DINP Delw

Bob your information(especially one #1, 2 and 3) is not correct and overly complicated. heres the simple version. for small molds this post has nothing to do with big molds for real injection machines, for the most part lets say you want a mold for a zorn machine or that type of machine, every machineshop that has the capabilities of doing it, will pretty much charge you the same price as zorn becuase it takes the same amount of time generally. 1st things 1st, Custom machine work is just that CUSTOM. there is generally NO print, only a sample to go off of or an idea. Unlike a blue print were a machine shop can look at a print and say yup its going to cost xxx amount of money. this is more of fly off the seat of your pants type of thing. a machine shop gets xx amount per hour. its usually around 60 bucks and hour for normal machining jobs So lets just say 60 and hour or $1 per min. we wont throw in 4th and 5th axis work or anything else for the sake of this post. from the min your part is worked on your charged, this includes set-up time ordering and buying material tooling, programming time, reworking to make it just right time even talking to the customer about design changes etc etc, fees are generally like this A custom mold is: ( for the most part figure a custom mold costing $400+) thats only 6.5 hours of work which isnt alot of time). A bait that was never commercially designed and its your own design and product, no one gets it not friends other machine shops no one, most mold makers wont even use it for themselves.. you get charged programming time, set-up time material price etc etc basically everything a production mold is molds that are made that the mold maker decides to put online, usually there own design or a copy off of a commercially produced bait., because its a production mold you generally pay only for Machine time, stock and finish work. you dont pay for set-up time programming time etc etc. A production mold that you want modified, generally you dont pay anything or only pay for the modifications. as far as cad files machine files and such being your property. No not even close. its not yours unless you goto someone and specifically arrange for that. some people will make the cad file for people for a price, and its yours but it doesnt cut the part its just a pretty picture. any shop that gives you there machine files and modified cad files are fools for a few reasons.( and I dont think you will find a machine shop anywere that will do that. one they just cut there own throats, cause a part they just made, figured out how to run, figured out the tooling feeds and speeds and everything is all by experiance, not to mention why if someone got the first one would they even come back to get another one, they could find anyone with a machine in there garage with a machine and have them run it. not to mention anyshop that would run some else's cam file(machine file) is a fool cause it can easily destroy some's pcs of equipment.and most people cant check a mold program before the run it as its was too long and a machinist isnt going to sit there single blocking 300,000+ lines of code. ( its easier to just write the whole thing from scratch.) as far as ND's in my opinion its not even worth the time,if you cant take someones word for it than dont let them see your part. we do it for some but for the most part I dont, just because once I see the baits there usally something copied with a small size change or someting silly, most customers understand 100% reasons beings I have signed ND's and then get the bait and its a bait that I have online, then I get a C&D order served to me then the lawyers start writing letters and I usually have to tell the to F- off. I been doing this for a ton of years and I see thousands of different baits a year, I usually only see half a dozen baits or less per year that are truely unique that no one else had ever dreamed of let alone made. As far as china, That shit hole will do anything, and its AMERICANS that will have them do it. I have seen them take baits and make molds out of them and then sell them on ebay. I've had customers call me up asking me why I sold his baits to china cause there baits are under another name. I never do that I wont even deal with that P.O.S. of a country. what they do is buy a bait and make a mold of it then copy it and sell it. its very easy to do as guys do it all the time with POP RTV and other media. I have baits that one of my customers sent me that his competator claimed to have made and designed, not to mention got a huge write up in europe somewhere about how great this bait was, it was nothing more than a copy, they even had the exact same machine lines in the plastic which cant be copied by any machinist, after doing some real good looking we found that they covered the name up that was on the tail, but it still slightly showed the imprint of my customers name. if any American or American Company does goto china/mexico or any other 3rd world country to have the molds made cause everyone else they feel is too expensive, they deserve everything they get and I dont feel sorry for them in the least, it actually makes my day when I hear the horror stories from people who go there cause they want something for nothing. oops one more thing on CAD files. if you have a cad file made that doesnt mean it is machinable, or ready to be machines, MOST cad drawers Dont have a clue about machining a mold let alone machining a part, just because it can be drawn, doesnt mean it can be cut. I have seen quite a few cad files that had to have some major rework done to them just to make the bait makeable. ALWAYS before you spend the money or time to draw up a cad file talk to the person at a machine shop about it, other wise you could be wasting a ton of money on a pretty picture that wont work. Delw

Jerry looks really really nice,, you did a fantastic job its clean looking and the colors are great,. and its fast I now can see private msgs that I could never find the button for in the past LOL Delw

Dont take this wrong as its not meant to be. I program for people and have been programming for people and myself since the early 90's, Ive trained people how to program machines for a local machine company here as a side job in AZ as well.I also run my own shop. bottom line you would have to be an absolute fool to get a program from someone you dont know and run it on your equipment, especially off the internet. there are many reasons why, but the main reason is a program might crash then your out a machine and the time and everything else. is it worth the value of your machine to ruin it? I know what your thinking and most machinist think the same way. I will watch it and slow it up. thats both true and not true no matter how good someone thinks they are. a simple program with a few lines is no problem to watch the first run, However a 3d program your talking thousands of lines of code, just for a simple one. it never fails when someone thinks everything is going good they get lazy and trust worthy and then it happens you get the crash like no other crash you ever had, while most crashs in both 2d and 3d programming usually occour during the rapids or tool changes ( in between cavities changing tools and at the end of the tools) its not always the case, pretty much anyone can make a cad file and due to the cam software anyone THINKS they can generate cnc code with it, but thats not completely true. I've seen solids that look to be really good on the cad side be a complete nightmare on the cam side just to make the code and have nothing but big problems on output code. and this was done by Boeing engineers. Bobcad(especially) and Mastercam are perfect examples of things that go wrong for know reason at all especially in surfaces and in solids, ive seen them throw lines in code for no real reason just because the surface or solid file was broken where the mating surfaces meet. Some of the shops I run parts for, used to send me there machine files, I refuse to run them unless they give me a money order for the price of the replacement of the machine and tooling and down time. even the companies I program for will send me my own program and the parts when they dont have machine time for them, that they used and I still wont use it, you never know if anyone edited the program or not. is it really worth the price of your equipment/downtime ? the other problems is most 3d code will run more than the memory in most machines so it has to be dnc's, I have programs over 30 megs long and thats just the nc code for molds with out sub routines and using sub routines some programs are 10+ megs, which brings in a hole nother problem to worry about and thats sub routines and the code they use and how its interpeted by each individual control. Trust me its more of a head ach than its worth its faster and easier to set you own machine up, code your own machine for your own tooling, not to mention you will learn alot more about what your doing. Delw .

Bo this one threw me for a loop, I am looking at the cad file and its saying round, it could be a mathmatical annomly ( vodkaman can explain that better) I have seen it happen on threads on some metric stuff and running full 4th axis on some convoluted grooves but never on a mold with 3 axis like this. what happens is when you change a angle or a number sometimes you get a series of numbers that the machine control just doesnt like and interripits wrong. these are running polyline but the spacing is .0025 apart for the rib ( the program for a fs7 4 cavity mold is 8megs long) too me the pics look like there is only 2 points in each polyline, ie making half a square per side. so its basically skipping about 50-75 points in between each point to make that half circle. Very weird Delw

The problem is pretty simple to fix, its the plastic its just to hard of a plastic to pour in that small of a hole. what happens is that even at a hotter temp the plastic wont get thin enough to pour very well. go with the super soft plastic like people have said and DONT use softener or at least very little, your plastic will be much thinner and much easier to pour.. on a 3" stick the hole opening is only 3/16 if memory serves me correctly. it will pour great but just not with a hard plastic due to how thick it pours. if you ahve any problems just let me know. Delw

The molds were never changed frm the org one or from a hand pour to a hand injection except the angle of them. Looking at the pics I am like thats not my mold LOL it should be just like the org. nly thing I changed was the angle of the worm so it would fit in a smaller plate, that shouldnt have any bearing on the shape of the worm, Bo send me a sample of that bait, I havent changed the program in over 2 years? I will figure out what happened. the last few I made I thought they looked funny but figured it was my eyes and an optical illusions. Delw

people have been using all types of heated pots for a while, presto and others. Dont know about the one you showed the best one by far that I know of is Crock pots they are all glass/ceramic and the temp stays more constent. of cource there is no place for a mixer. the problem with other pots is they are made out of alum or pot metal and the heatlin element only works on the bottom and not the sides so the heat doesnt get distributed evenly. The guys that have used crock pots like them much better especially for colors with glitter in them and colors that burn easy, they say they heat the plastic more evenly. some guys built stands for mixers to set on the top. another thing really nice about crockpots is there glass/ ceramic and the plastic comes right out NO stcking ever

Thats the tricky part. this is what I know was tried. small air tubes piped in with copper on the bottom, a roatisory motor(sp)with an auger system like you mentoned going length wise one that did work but took some room, I think like every 4 or 5 tubes wide, used electric egg beater motor for the drive. and pulleys every 4-5 tubes with paddles on them. to connect them you use a rubber band so to speak. its a industrial rubber band comes in a roll about 1/8-3/16 diameter you cut to length and fuse together with a lighter. the pulleys are simple its just a grooved rod so to speak with a set screw in it to lock it to the shafts. you put the rubber band around like a figure 8 so each one goes in the opposite direction. ie 1 top 1 bottom 1 top 1 bottom etc etc. remember that old toy we used to have when we were kids, it had a bunch of round parts with holes in it and a bunch of rods to stick together and build stuff.? thats what I got the idea off of, sounds corny but it worked. so I made them out of alum for the guy. Delw

heres a link to brownells, tank burner stand etc the tank is cheaper than I thought it would be http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/cid=403/Products/Metal_Bluing

the guys that I know that do it for a living use long black iron (or steel) retangular pots, 4x6inch wide up 8inchs deep they use gas burners to heat the plastic above that is a rack, they dip as many long as they can fit dip once set up on the rack grab another rack dip again. a few of the guys have different tubs of plastic at different temps and just move the rack. also you can use salt in the tanks and make a mixer that wont get into the way of the dipping process. some guys have it automated and it can be built very easy using home tools out of your garage. I have some drawings somewere that I made for a guy, He did the work I just drew it up for him and make him a few parts. theres many ways to do it, just need to use your imagination. Blueing tanks from gunsmithing should be deep enough also. Brownells sells some blueing tanks. Delw

My typeing wasnt the best as usual, I wasn't knocking the preso pot lots of guys had made them before bear. one guy was/is selling them long before. I see no difference between a presto pot and a lee pot as far as a lawsuit goes, how ever because one was used for cooking food and one is used for cooking lead/plastic. if a cooking pot catchs fire and is sold by someone , specifically for using plastic for worms he's going to get sued well before someones lee pot that was used for plastic or lead. it the way it works, will the guy actually sue? who knows, but if the insurance is involved and a death occurred you can bet your *&& someone will get sued. this is why is seems silly to me. way back when we used to be resonciple for what we did and accept our own fate so to speak, now it seems everyone wants to sue everyone and even if they dont it will be enticed to you. look at the medical field. When my 17 year old son(who has Downsyndrom) had heart surgery at 6 months he had a 97% chance of NOT living. his second day in ICU he turned blue, the pacemaker didnt work like it was suppose to and to top it off the nurse that was suppose to be in his room was out in the halway talking. a med student and my mother saved his life. we got many lawyers sending us letters and stuff asking up to sue as we could win some major money. how we got these letters we have no clue as we never said a word to anyone about it, didnt even think about sueing. it was an accident on the pace maker , its an electronic device that can and will fail although we hope not. Delw

the way I understand it is Lee pots are built for plstic and lead, presto pots are designed for food, adding a valve will turn it into something else. seems silly to me, Pressure pots are for cooking fod under normal stive pressures, once you modiy one for ANYTHING else your open to a lawsuit, Ie the company who modifed the pressure pot. All american pressure cookers are one of the best and strongest and have NON plastic lids, they are also used alot for pressure pots in plastic. if you mention to them when you purchase the pot you are using it for something else they WILL not sell them to you. its a liability on there part also. so now you add a air hose and a heat band and some very hot plastic and you have a liability problem ONLY if you choose to sell them, if you make them for yourself I think there is a huge difference. the big difference is making the product and selling it. The way I understand it is that went you start doing things with pressure ( hot or cold) it runs into a completely different ball game. Our insurance guy explained it to us when the hand injectors first started to appear publicly for sale, thats the only reason we made a threaded one. because we made injection molds we could be held liable for any bodies injector that was put into our mold, just like just as much as the company who made the injector. the point is cover your ass, anyone can sue anyone and its really easy when you start in the manufacturing area using parts that are not designed for that specific purpose. some may remember way back when ( maybe 8 years ago), I was being sued for the medical costs becuase someones dog decided to eat the plastic liquid. funny thing was it was still in the freaking box UN opened and the post office had left it on the porch, dog got it got sick and I was chewed out and presented with a rather large bill. I just did a reply with a GFY message as I was laughing so hard I was crying. but it did get me to thinking, what happens if someones baby got that and drank it, am I liable or is the company that made the plastic liable? I repackaged it in another container, should I have put child safety caps on it???? being in the manufacturing industry my entire adult life you tend to see all kinds of things, and making parts for people/ or companies always gets you to thinking WHAT IF. Only reason I still have the safety locks on the machine doors is cause I had some idiot salemen come in and started nosing around. He sold machine tools, the idiot opened the door on a lathe running ceramic inserts on some Incolnel material. it was turning extreamly fast SFM wise when he opened the door he got a face full of chips and alot of burns on his chest and face so they all went back on right away. had one do it last year when we got our new machine ( I turned the door safety switch off cause I was setting up parts)and it was cutting rather fast, he opened the door and got blasted with coolant and alum chips from a 4" face mill. he had to go undress and shake his clothes out. and this guy was in the business and sold mills. makes you think doesnt it? for example buy a pcs of machinery that was intended for a specific purpose, Like a lathe. then make a frame and turn it straight up ie 90 degrees, if you have employees and something happens your in DEEP shit. as you made something that was made for a specific purpose and tested for that purpose and you changed it ( no matter how good you are and how safe it is. Reason I brought the lathe up was there was a big company here in the valley that took a 20in chuck Lathe turned if 45 degrees, thee made the frame and concrete frame and everything( they also had an engineerin dept) it was pretty damn cool and very sturdy. There insurance company made them do all kinds of stuff so they could use it, All kinds of red tape. Other wise if anyone got hurt on it they would loose the insurance. it ended up costing them over a year of down time cause they couldnt run it and had to do some kinda testing or something, I think it was osha that started the promles with it then the insurance got involved it was in the early 90's. its pretty much the same principle

Get a pin or razor blade, prick some holes in the biat or cut slices in them, put them in a plastic bag. pour scent into the bag, then put that plastic bag into another one and zip it shut. stick in in the microwave for 30 seconds maybe a min if your microwave isnt strong. then your done, the scent will stay on them for a long time. Delw

your always going to have some kind of plastic that cools off in the injector, even if its a small amount it will need to be cleaned out, I would think it would be impossible to make it otherwise. one reason to have more than 1 injector and alwyas leaves the ones your NOT using in a batch of hot plastic. I'd be curious about getting one ceramic coated on the outside to see how that worked, I dont shoot hours on end I shoot a few baits at a time so I dont have to wrap the injector, but the napa 1 pint one made of steel I do have to wrap with a towel and duct tape to use it when testing the bigger molds. I liek the sock Idea, if I would have thought of that I would have used it. Frank its been out for years and years, its called a injection machine LOL,dont have to do anything but let it run

the video on you tube I saw a few months ago, used heat exchangers, the plasic from the pots is not hot, it only gets hot in the heat exchanger, so the tubing aand lines wont hurt anyone if they break or leak. there was also one wth pressure pots that heated the plastic that will have pressure and hot plastic in the lines, thats an old zorn molds design(pressure pot one) I am sure he got the prints from the same guy who gave me the prints years ago. I got the prints after we had made a few of them( customers did I just made them parts), and they were pretty much close(simple design) except the part numbers were on it so you didnt have to spend alot of time looking for those. Both systems are also fully modifiable to anyones injections molds, just make the table underneath adjustable for height, as far as thickness of the molds just unbolt the clamps and heat exchanger(the ones that use them) and move it to were its needed. nothing hard about that at all. Oh BTW skin does grow back from 350 degree plastic its just takes about 1.3 years to grow 2 " long and 3/16 deep. then it takes about another year to were you dont cry like a baby when the sun hits it . that was with NO doc, I imagine it would be faster with medical equipment other than a razor blade and a needle LOL, if you ever get burnt goto a doc its not worth it and infection does set in pretty fast. Delw

aside from POwer worm listed you guys forgot the most important thing to people making injection machines. Liability Insurance. its bad enough for hand injected molds and hand injectors, but you talk about a machine with pressure and hot plastic on it the whole times its on? theres not to many people that will insure you for this and the ones that do comes at a very very high price. Sure someone can get by with out insurance but once you do that and someone gets hurt your FINISHED done and finacualy(sp) ruined. also to add to what powerworm said about affordable" affordable for who? the garage guy, the small business that just plays at night or a full time business? if your a full time bait business then you go with a real one Like a Zorn. while the money might kick someone in the butt and we all dont like to spend money, but if your running a real bait company full time and actually making a liveing ( not adding to your income) then get a good one. for a garage guy that has 2-4 k laying around and doesnt mind kicking 4+ plus in for a semi hobby it could be worth it. and there are guys who do that, I know guys that spend thousands and made there own and they dont sell the baits they just tinker or there own use, but they are independantly wealthy to and have extreamly good paying full time jobs. even with a zorn machine you still have to buy molds the the spending never stops.the bottom line is what do you want to do and how fast you want to go. I still say pouring single color stiks out of a pot is faster than injecting them, both come down to one thing, MOLDS and how many do you have? Delw