walkercope Posted October 7, 2022 Report Share Posted October 7, 2022 Has anyone here tried FDM printing lure molds? Seems like all the ones I see online are resin printed but I already own an FDM printer... My winter project is to make my own glide baits for next year's striper season. My plan is develop a process that's easy to cast the parts and gives repeatable results out straight out of the mold. To start with I'm going to 3d scan a lure I already have that I like the swim of and try to replicate it at a larger scale, just to limit the number of variables. So for now I can just focus on the molding and weighting. In the future if I wanted to sell them I'd model my own. My main motivation for this was to keep from paying 150-200$ for the commercially available resin glides this size that swim like I want so I don't want to pay someone else to make the molds for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dlaery Posted October 7, 2022 Report Share Posted October 7, 2022 i'm curious, is the mold for soft plastic or hard plastic? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkercope Posted October 7, 2022 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2022 1 hour ago, dlaery said: i'm curious, is the mold for soft plastic or hard plastic? Casting restin - alumalite or similar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dlaery Posted October 7, 2022 Report Share Posted October 7, 2022 after i re-read you post I realized what you was doing. I have printed some glide baits. Idon't think they had enough weight in the bottom, they wanted to roll over. good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hand Crafted Angling Posted October 11, 2022 Report Share Posted October 11, 2022 I’ve printed many soft plastics molds out of fdm. Although I’ve never tried it I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for a hard bait. Just out of curiosity why not print the lure directly on the printer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walkercope Posted October 11, 2022 Author Report Share Posted October 11, 2022 2 hours ago, Hand Crafted Angling said: I’ve printed many soft plastics molds out of fdm. Although I’ve never tried it I see no reason why it wouldn’t work for a hard bait. Just out of curiosity why not print the lure directly on the printer? I'm sure you could but I want to have enough to do different sink rates, color schemes, and have enough for my friends to fish with too. I think if I get the mold process going well it won't be much time or effort to make another bait. I'll only have to sand the layer lines down once on the mold vs every time on the printed lures. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aulrich Posted October 11, 2022 Report Share Posted October 11, 2022 There was a post from the spring where a guy was casting hard bodies in an FDM mold. I tried it myself but I did not build in enough clearance so it wan just about impossible to get the wire harness and ballast done right. I did have some success printing a mold of a mold the upside is you can adjust the silicon mold easier if you need to expand the pour hole. And rigging the mold for pouring is more forgiving with wire dimensions. One thing I did not do enough of was tuning my printer for dimensional accuracy is did some but the 20mm calibration cubes are not quite enough. errors that don't show up at 20 mm will at 200 mm. Tuning will help with layer lines but the single best mod I did for my printer for layer lines was to make a spool holder that ran on bearings. A coat of CA glue gets all but the worst of the layer lines. From my limited experience with cast bodies I find a printed lure takes less effort. But I will admit that maybe I don't have the practice building harnesses. Up till now my over riding design goal is to end up with a one piece lure blank like it was carved from one piece of wood. I have done screw eyes slotted thru wire and "drilled" through wire. I did a bit of a side by side of cast and printed lures and I actually prefer printed over cast, in the case of that particular body. The printed lure had a slightly better action. This is what I mean by a Mold of a Mold 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
