taylor1595

Exactly my experience with them a few weeks ago. Great communication from April.

Trust me, I read the horror stories but I had a customer wanting a certain bait that he had the mold for and when I got a live person to call me back I decided to chance it. I was fully expecting to not even get my first call returned and having to tell the customer I couldn't do the bait. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Reading through this topic and several others I've seen Del's name brought up. I ordered a mold from him a couple months ago even though I was very hesitant from seeing stuff on here but did anyway just because I couldn't find it anywhere else. I called and left a message, April called me back within the hour and wasn't sure on an answer to a question I had and said she would ask Del and call me back. A few minutes later she called back with an answer and I placed my order. I received my mold in a little under 3 weeks with a couple of emails I sent checking on status promptly answered by Del or April. I don't know if I got lucky since this is the first mold I bought from him or what, but the customer service was as good as I could have expected.

Anyone know what scent/oil Jackal puts on their plastics? I don't have a bag and nobody around my area sells Jackal. I have a customer wanting to know if I can get that scent for him.

Anyone have a list of companies with injection machines that can shoot production molds? Looking for some quotes to shoot a mold. I have contacted D&J and Southern. Looking for some more options with possibly smaller minimum piece per color.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys! Gives me a great base to work with. Always so much good info on this site.

Anyone have suggestions on a good starting point?

What's the consensus on which mold is a better copy between dels FS6 and BTS 5.9 bent worm?

For those using drums what have you found works best to keep it mixed well?

I have some powder coated 1/4 oz lead inserts if you want to try some. .50 ea

What size and where do you get your glass media? I despise salt as well.

I'm not much of an electrician so I had a buddy that is an electrician come over and fix my work area where I could set up everything. I'll take a pic of the plugs and breaker box setup he put in for me. elrat69, That's possibly the only issue I've ever had but I'm not sure if it was because I was using salt that was not fine enough or because of the system. I had some inconsistency between the first baits being too heavy with salt and the last few having too little salt. I absolutely hate using salt so I don't mess with it except when I do sticks.

I forgot another thing about having the universal heater because I run full batches always now. If you have two injectors you can have them like I do in the picture and time it to where you can shoot two different sets of molds alternating. In other words you could be shooting Pearl swimbaits from one pot with one of the injectors and while they cool shoot green pumpkin craws with the other pot and injector. The injector on the middle will be cooler and the plastic will start to thicken the last inch or two of the stroke when running the pots set at 300 like I like to though

And I'd have to look at my paperwork but the system was around 1,000 base price

Frank, I'd like to first thank you for what you share with the public. Your videos were the best things I watched when I was starting out and it's still crazy to me how efficient you are with the presto and twinjector setup. I like the stand alone heater because I like to hear the injector hotter than what my plastic is and be able to have the injector getting hot before I turn on the pots and stay hot between batches. I can turn the pots off and let them cool enough to clean up and change color and the injector stays hot on the universal heater and is handy right there by the molds and pots. I hardly ever take the injector apart. By heating it and keeping it hot like that you can purge what tiny bit is in it easily. About the only time I take it apart to clean it is if I'm going to shoot straight white.

Let me preface this little write up by saying I'm in no way affiliated with Ultra Molds and haven't been and won't be compensated for this post. The reason for doing this is that I know there is interest in this product but there is very little hands on info about it and I would have loved to have someone shorten the learning curve and give me pointers before I got mine. Hopefully this will not be removed and thought of as an advertisement because that is not it's purpose at all, it's simply some tips and tricks to help people decide if this system might be for them. With all that said I wanted to wait after I've had the system a few months and have ran around 300 gallons of plastic through it before I gave my thoughts. The system comes with two pots with stirring motors and heaters with digital controls connected by a manifold for dual injecting. You also need to by the dual injector that has the tips that fit in and turn the valves on each pot and the manifold. First thing I would recommend is getting the Universal Heater that they sell. There are a couple of reasons for this. One reason is that the first thing I do when I walk into the shop is turn on the Universal Heater with my dual injector sitting in it and let it start getting hot. While it's heating I then can clean the pots out from the residue from the day before and the injector will be up to temp by the time I'm done cleaning and heating the plastic up. Another reason for the Universal Heater is that I run it's temp up to 325 on the digital control but I run the pots at a different temp. (more on this later) A couple of other "options" that I opted for and almost didn't and am so glad I did after using the system. You can get a mounting plate with holes all pre drilled and everything ready to mount it on. I almost didn't get this but it made it very easy to set up in the shop. I drilled 4 holes in the stainless bench that I have it on in the shop and mounted the plate with system on it and fastened it with bolts and wing nuts so I can remove it easily if I need the room for something else. Another thing I almost didn't get and can't imagine using the system without is the locking brackets. The way Rupert explained these to me is that they designed these for a customer that had a disability and had limited use of one arm so he need to be able to draw the plastic one handed. The brackets make drawing plastic so much easier that I honestly think if you have a system without them you need to spend the 20 bucks or so and get them. Instead of having to push in with one hand to seat the injector and pull on the handle and working against yourself and making it easy to suck air the brackets keep the injector firmly seated and you can draw plastic one handed. Very slick and like I said I would hate using it without it now. As far as actually using and running the system it's pretty simple and straight forward once you get the feel of the valves and injector. Here are some observations and tips from things I've found after running it a few months. 1. I seem to have the best luck with reducing dents, getting good laminates, not discoloring the plastic, if I run the digital controls on each pot set at 300 degrees. (remember I set my Universal Heater at 325) I keep my injector sitting in the Universal injector set at 325 the whole time I shoot. I feel like by keeping the injector on that heater it will stay much much hotter and I have no problems with it plugging up. It would probably work fine sitting in the middle cradle between the pots, but I feel like it keeps things flowing better when the injector is really hot. 2. I heat my plastic in the microwave and then add my coloring, glitter, etc before I put it in the pots. You can heat from raw to workable temp in the pot, but it's going to take longer and you are going to have to turn the temp up and then back down. I run on 60 ounce batches and it takes 12-15 minutes to heat 60 ounces of plastic to temp depending on the strength of your microwave. I put 60 oz in each pot. If I'm doing single color baits both sides get the same color, for laminates I have one color in each. the 60 oz comes up to just under the top of the stirring paddles. 3. Cleaning is not as bad as I was afraid it was going to be. All I normally do between colors is after the pots have cooled I peel what plastic I can out including the "puck" at the bottom, then spray the inside with simple green and wipe out with a paper towel. When I take my plastic out of the microwave I turn on the pot heaters to begin heating the pots. I don't do this before then because I don't want what is leftover in the channel to the valve and manifold to melt and run back into the pot before I add the new plastic. After I get the colorant and glitter I dump the plastic in the pots and then I purge the manifold and injector by drawing an inch or so out and shooting it on the table. Usually doing this 2-3 times and you are rid of the previous color and ready to go. I read on here somewhere about blowing the channels out with an air compressor and am going to try that pretty soon as that may reduce the amount of plastic I have to purge. Shooting Star vs Presto Pots I started out trying to run two presto pots with a Basstackle Twinjector setup. For what I do and my personal preference I can't imagine going back to the prestos. I feel like I'm much more efficient with the shooting star (even though Frank could still shoot circles around me out of his Prestos, but that doesn't count because he is a machine) there is no blending block to clean out and your injectors aren't submerged in the hot plastic The shooting star is a pretty well sealed and contained unit so the smoke is very much reduced. I still run a vent system, but I couldn't handle the smoke that the presto pots put out. There is very little waste when you are done with a batch and I always had a hard time with sucking air when I got close to empty with the prestos. One thing I will note is that the single injector you can get for the system is kind of difficult to use with the system due to the push/pull thing I talked of earlier and the opening and closing of the valves can unseat the injector tip. I have found the single injector extremely useful for doing remelts though. I heat the injector in the universal heater and melt sprues in a big pyrex and just draw from the pyrex with the single injector and wipe it and sit it back on the heater between shots. After using it for several months I would say I'm very happy with the system and Rupert was very easy to deal with whenever I had a small issue and went above and beyond to get it resolved. I also had him build me an air clamp that you can see on the right side of the picture of my setup. This is a huge time saver as well not having to mess with manual clamps. Like I said, this is not meant as an advertisement, but mainly to give info on a fairly new system and to answer questions people might have that are on the fence about it. If anyone has any other questions I'd be happy to answer as I'm sure I've left something off.

most molds are cut to order so usually looking at a week or so depending on backlog. Great guy to deal with

I bought some norpro and for some reason I get tons of bubbles when I tried heating in them. Can use the same plastic with Pyrex and no issues. Anyone else ever had that problem?

I've used bondo several times to make two piece jighead molds. Use Pam to keep halves from sticking

I have their mini shooting star system and an air clamp system from them I've been running for a few months. I am going to do a review as soon as I sit still long enough to type it out because I know lots of people are interested in them and have questions. For now I will say they are great products and Rupert and Chris are very good to work with and no I'm not affiliated with them in any way.

Clearbags.com

I'm a plastic guy but I have a friend that ties crappie jigs that I want to get the material for him to tie me a few up since they are out of stock pretty much everywhere. Could anybody recommend what I need to get him and a link possibly? I can get jig heads but don't know what feathers or hackles I need to buy him for the longer 5-6 inch preacher style bass jigs. I'm just wanting white. Thanks!

I'm a plastic guy but I have a friend that ties crappie jigs that I want to get the material for him to tie me a few up since they are out of stock pretty much everywhere. Could anybody recommend what I need to get him and a link possibly? I can get jig heads but don't know what feathers or hackles I need to buy him for the longer 5-6 inch preacher style bass jigs. I'm just wanting white. Thanks!

That one is made by Curt at Enforcer Molds. Great guy to deal with.

Josh is with Reaction Innovations. It's neat to know how the bigger companies do it. I'm betting he has employees running the machines but not sure.