I have successfully been using the Form1+ to create simple 3d printed injection molds with the standard Formlabs resin. You can find my results, the mold creation process and pictures under this link How to bring a 3D printed 2-cavity injection mold to life – Part 1 | plastic labs
8 Likes
this is really cool @supervisor, eagerly awaiting part two!!
Thanks for this great info. I was a bout to invest a lot of money into manufacturing aluminum molds from home. I believe steel will be necessary to get 10,000 to 100,000 parts from a mold as i would like to do.(but maybe not) This seems like a sure fire way to make sure you have everything right before you move on to steel and would be great for small runs. I spent just under 4 years as mold make apprentice. I mainly focused on tight tolerance shut offs and inspection. A lot of our work was done off prints we got from our engineer team. I did not get much exposure to calculating the right size runners, sprue, exct. One thing we did a lot was put a secondary runner(dump) a much larger vent to escape to atmosphere that connects to part detail vent. awesome stuff. can you send me an e-mail address or some point of contact as I would like to discuss what you are doing in more depth and may have some tips. I can be reached at george@stressreleasedesigns.com
1 Like
Thanks for the good feedback. 
You can find part 2 of my project under How to bring a 3D printed 2-cavity injection mold to life – Part 2 | plastic labs With the new high temperatur resin from Formlabs and a simple aluminum shell 3d printed molds should work very well
Luis_42
5
Hello. I did my Master Degree in product development about the use of injection molds made with polymeric materials. The big conclusion is that we must control the mold temperature and avoid to cross the Tg (Transion temperature of the mold base material). Example if your mold is made of ABS_Like for Stratasys Polyjet and the Tg is around 50º you must cool down (freeze) the mold in the next injection cycle. Note: Control every cycle the mold temperature otherwise the mold will be damage.
Thanks for your feedback. As the mold resin is in direct contact with the hot nozzle, the plastic enters very hot and the gap in the mold appears only in the first few centimeters but the cavities are still very crisp in detail after a couple of shots I assume that an aluminum shell could help spread/take the heat. This would make 3d printed molds out of normal resin possible. If you would have a couple of these 3d printed cavities/aluminum shell molds to stress relieve your molds you would be able to get a lot good shoot out of inexpensive and fast to produce molds
Hello again. I use 3 kinds of material in the mold cavities. The mold base is steel and the cavities are assembly in the mold base. To have a long tool life we need to control the temperature of the PA6 cavities and cool each shot. To cool the cavity I use air pressure flow (30 to 60 seconds).
In this image I have a ABS_Like cavity after 50 shots
The gate is steel material because is the part with more temperature time.
Can you send a link to where you buy the pellets for injection?
Also did you make your own injection system?
This might be a stupid question but can you buy steel mold with an empty cavity online?
SRDogge
12
http://easyplasticmolding.com/model\_20/ordernow.html
I have not purchased anything from this site. But I think this link has what you are looking for.
You can buy molds without cavity here as well http://injectionmolder.net/accessories.htm I bought pellets on Ebay and currently I am collecting plastic bottle caps to reuse them in molds. I am lacking a grind currently but preciousplastic.com will surely have a solution after February 1st
Luis_42
14
I´m in Marinha Grande - Portugal and in this region we have 200 Moldmaking companies so is easy to buy such mold base or buying in standard suppliers (Hasco, DME, Meusburger, etc…). But the sites presented looks very good (but are for US market). About material we handle bags 25 kg (PP, ABS, PC, HDPE etc…)
