curt k

I use dish soap to wash my production molds before shelving or shipping them . Palmolive or sunlight are very safe to use on aluminum . I give them a scrub then lean them up to drip dry , then pat them on a towel to get the remainder of the water out I learned the hard way that dish detergent for washing machines is very bad for them though . the molds turned purplish and were rough feeling , I ended up turfing the whole lot http://www.enforcerbaitmolds.com/

The plastic won't necessarily absorb all the energy in the microwave My testing station is near my mills and I've had a few occasions where small aluminum chips have gotten mixed into my plastics and the results have been pretty nasty

Keeping up with a website and running a business is most certainly a chore , Ive got the bags under my eyes to prove that . . Getting these molds up on the website was a bit slow , but they are only a few weeks old and were pulled out of my design folder due to requests , otherwise I'm heavily focused on production these days

Frank , I do read the forum and I'm on here daily , I just don't post much . Your right , those worms weren't on the site when you checked . I'm so busy these days keeping up with the machining that my new site suffers from getting updated promptly . When I saw that you were asking for a link - then I got wondering if they were even on there , so I posted them as soon as I could My webhosting has been a nightmare up to this point , and 3 hosts later I think I've finally found the right one , so I'm hoping that juggling act is over

acceleration on tight g code is still going to be limited to processor speed . Rapid speeds can certainly shave off time over a year , but if working part by part then the time saved can be somewhat insignificant . I worked in one company that we could barely keep up with with the production . We made our own parts for a large assembly . We leaned out the processes so that everything was fixtured and set with either g52 or g10 shifts . Plunk a fixture on and go (more or less) . We went as far as having each tool shelved and numbered with the tool heights marked so that they could be dropped into the machine and good to go (mils with small tool magazines ). Time studies were something that we looked at and the difference from a short tool holder to a longer tool holder was quite surprising . Longer holders meant less distance for rapids , and an inch or two on each holder that we could extend added up to x amount more assemblies that we could produce in a year . It was actually quite shocking the savings that we gained in that alone . The key is that these were also done on cell systems with multi pallets , so there was no need to factor in loading time . These were all cool in a controlled production environment but it doesn't really apply for jobbing types of work . I know how to make things work in all environments , so while working with my own equipment I process everything in a way to compensate for lacks in performance , etc , it's just a matter of taming the nature of the beast

It's not limited to being just the mini's . It's just what hass has in the mills . I'm not saying that they are slow , because they are quite fast but many time fast isn't as fast as we would like and thats where the problem is . I've never worked with the office mill and after seeing the price I have no interest in the mill , so I honestly have no idea of it's performance . I look at that thing as buying one mill or two , and two spindles will put out far more parts in a day than one faster one. I'd assume that it's typical to the rest at which they throw the same controller on as they do with all of their other mills and if thats the case then processing speed will be always an issue . It certainly wouldn't be a size issue because I used to work on a toyoda fh630 that has scary fast rapids , and it's a heart stopper when a guy forgets to drop the rapids while doing a setup . Mind you for the price of that 1 mill a guy/gal can fill a shop with smaller hass mills . Bottom line is that hass makes a decent mill , cheaper , reliable , and fixes are cheap in comparison to the Japanese mills . But , they are also weaker and not nearly as rigid (industrial speaking) . I personally think that there are much better options out there that are in the same price range as the office mill . I honestly can't picture it being a big seller because for one theres zero logic in having a noisy stinky mill in an office environment ,and I see it as more of a novelty item than a practical one Ultimately theres a mill for nearly ever need the limiting factors are being able to accommodate the machine or afford it . After a certain price range a guy has to ask himself if molds are going to pay the mill off sooner or is other work the better choice . For me it's a passion , I've lived and breathed fishing all of my life so it's a gig that I enjoy doing , but if I had a couple hundred thou into machinery then changes are that I'd be chasing down contract work

there's no reason that a tormach can't be used to make molds . I do agree with others that conversational programming does have its limits . At the end of the day it is all about math as you previously stated fish-on and math is what the cam products use to produce g code , but the math is quite complex . Most cnc machines will calculate macro variables and there are calculations for figuring out geometric shapes . So it is possible to hand code a geometric 3d shape with looping sub routines that calculates each move on a geometric shape , Lets assume we're using a ball nose and the routine started from the pocket outer edge , scaling can be used within a loop to calculate step over etc . Now on a ball shaped cavity , step down would also need another portion of the sub routine added to calculate how much further in the start point is from the last .. A bit of trig would probably do the trick for that . The routine/routines can run from a start point looping through until the tool reaches the bottom of the pocket and a few variable stating that if the loop is smaller than ... then the routine is done . Squares are dead simple to create a pocket routine but 3d circles , ellipses etc can become quite complex for calculating . This type of programming can be very mind challenging and time consuming which needs a strong mind and well trained foresight . Tris is only regarding true geometric shapes , oddball shapes are going to be extremely hard to do if they are doable at all At the end of the day cam does the calculating for us within seconds and we can trust the code that comes out . I do a lot of hand coding in a day but when its a complicated part which is going to eat up a lot of time then I'm all over the cam software

hass mini mills and tm mills are set to run single phase . It comes with a sacrifice of some torque . The tm's already have a gutless spindle so a converter would probably be best with them , though I do know a few guys who are running them single phase in their garages . A faster spindle can be advantageous in some aspects but in complex situations the benefits probably aren't going to be there The super mini's with their 10,000 rpm spindle are limited to how fast they can process . Even with the hsm options the mills can't reach the top feed rates on complex toolpaths , and this is something that I've seen time and time again . The hsm option creates a much smoother motion and the mills aren't nearly as jerky , but Ive had a number of times that I've over road the feedrate and they won't move any faster . They're obviously going to beat a tormach or the likes , but hass are still the bottom of the barrel of the production types of machines and they have many limits in comparison to the quality of the Japanese mills

sealing it should be good for preventing moisture and make it less sticky for pouring . What I meant by stable is that it doesn't tend to warp out of shape or suffer from stress relief . It's more of a machining thing than anything . The part that I made for example was a high tolerance titanium clevis which had so much material hogged out of it that it needed a lot of machine operations due to stress relief while machining and re-clamping . The prototype block followed the same procedures but it held its shape extremely well

Plastics can be pretty nasty when using small cutters ,it can melt to the cutter quite easily and break the tool or stick in little globs to the part being made . The right choice in tools and a heavy coolant concentrate is a must .

it's very much a machinable material and it's very stable to work with . Time and moisture does change things since it is vulnerable to absorbing moisture but its great for testing purposes (aside from the mess). A lot of people use machinable wax for learning cnc , prototyping etc , and another material which gets used and is pretty much a block of bondo . I've only used it once throughout my career and it was roughly a 20x20 inch square block . It was small compared to a lot of the stuff that we typically ran but It extremely necessary because the material cost of the one off part was 15k and highly certified which could take months to replace . For the most part most standard materials are usually cheap enough to risk scrapping a part .

Thanks guys for the positive words about our company . Regarding the shipping , if thers ever a problem with timing or anything else then contact me any time We've been shipping US orders with USPS from Washington state for over a year now . I monitor everything about our orders including tracking packages and who is getting what and when . I've worked it out so that all packages arrive in a timely manner and is reasonably priced , and oddly enough our US customers benfit from better shipping rates than Canadians who are having to get stuff thru Canada post It's rare that it ever takes more that two weeks for a customer to recieve their package , and usually thats only under odd circumstaces (holidays etc). If by chance someone needs their products sooner then I can always make arrangements to suite that , but it also comes with a hefty premium as well , which is out of my control . I'll do what I can to accomidate . Regards Curt Enforcer Bait Molds

these guys sell some nice concentrates and the coffee flavor may do the trick http://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/c-149-coffee-flavors.aspx I havent tried the coffee but I do have other flavors and they stink (in a good way) They are foodgrade and meant as flavoring , but they are heavily concentrated and they mix well with the plastic . I don't know how they are for longevity because I use my baits as I make em , though I'm sure that in a sealed bag the scent isn't going to dumb down http://baitmolds.enforcermolds.com/molds/

the plastic from plastic world is cheaper http://plasticworld.ca/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=157 I'm not sure how the alumilite plastic is but shipping to BC isn't too bad , so I'll be grabbing 5 gallons soon for torture testing

yep ! I freed up a mill for a bit on saturday and did some tweaks to the programming . http://baitmolds.enforcermolds.com/molds/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=141&search=lizard That lizard was always meant to have the deep rings but I had a customer request a fat floating lizard during it's design stage , so I left it with a fair bit of meat to it . Now I have both versions

oops , when I was recently updating the site I dropped it somehow . here it is , the rings aren't as deep as the other that you've posted so I don't know if this is what your wanting but it is a great bait http://baitmolds.enforcermolds.com/molds/index.php?route=product/product&path=60&product_id=140

I'm not sure as to what size your looking for but I've got a ringed lizard on my site , Enforcer Molds

A number of years back I cut an mdf open pour frog mold with a cnc router , worked great and I only sealed it with varnish . That was the first bait mold that I ever made . Router quickly got replaced with a few mills

i agree , the bio plastic was the only thing that I've ever come across , I thought it was fun to play with but didn't do much with it , it was surprisingly tough though

I've played with this bio degradable recipe http://green-plastics.net/posts/84/qaa-can-i-make-bioplastic-fishing-lures/ It comes out ok and would be deadly for creating scented baits , but the shelf life is horrible and its not very cost effective , good for a few days on the water and thats about it . you can remelt it but its very liquidy , and it takes some time to solidify , so it pours well but would be a mess to inject unless a guy can modify the recipe some to thicken it . overall its just a fun experiment but may strike some ideas

the exploded beer bottle was an empty bottle ,and it obviously it would have still had moisture in it since it was freshly drank and thrown in the pit . The impact of it was pretty clear to me .and actually a bit surprising to me cocidering the number of bottles I've seen thrown into the fires while in my youth The mold isn't going to get hot enough to crack up a tile , my point was that if hot plastic got spilled on it then it very well may . And yes a cooler pack will create condensation and more so than most things that come out of of a freezer and for sure it would create more than a tile , but I could throw one of those against a wall and chances are that it would stay intact

boulders are generally used in saunas and steam baths because they hold heat well , Heatsinks are units which are designed to dissipate heat .Aluminum makes a good heatsink because it drops the heat quicker than most materials . Heat and wet stone is a dangerous combination , the old school meathod of breaking up rock was to heat it then throw water on it , then the rock would shatter . I've seen rocks pop in camp fires because they were holding in moisture . My boss had his lip sewn up because someone threw a beer bottle into the fire pit , it basically exploded and a chunk of glass cut his face wide open I'm sure a warm mold wouldn't be enough to shatter a piece of tile , but a cold tile that has condensation from being in a freezer may very well shatter if any hot plastic gets dropped on it . It would probably have a similar effect as putting a measuring cup of plastic on a cold metal surface If I was to use anything to rapidly cool down a mold then I'd probably use a cooler ice pack . it would keep the mold dry , and it would stay cold for a fair amount of time

If you've got an army navy store close by then check them out for the dip dye . I had a guy recently tell me that the local store(new west bc) carries the spike-it dye . I haven't seen it for myself so its hearsay