mililanius

I believe you want to look into getting a patent as opposed to a copyright. Im thinking you might have a hard time doing this. Unless it has some very unique mechanics or something like that, you wont be able to get a patent on a lure that looks like a fish. Most lures are similar to another lure. I thought about getting a patent for the lure i created, but really its a similar concept to about a half dozen lures already made. And in the lure business, if you have a good idea, it will be stolen and mass produced usually by a bigger company no matter what you do. see senko or the paddle tail bass trix, huddelston.

I use the standard adhesive 3D eyes and just dip or paint the lure head with an epoxy to seal it and keep them on there.

I just finished making a mold. I drew the model in Inventor and exported it as a stp. file and it worked great. The biggest problem I had was finding someone to actually do the machining. Called about a dozen places and no one was interested. They are too busy and don't want to do a run of one part. It took 3 months to get the mold made. A big reason no one wants to do it is because of the time it takes. it will tie up they machine for hours (depending on details). Here are some tips for making the cut faster (this should save you time and money): Don't use small inside radius', keep it above a 1/6th of an inch. Make as few cavities as possible. When creating the mold model, only include one cavity and let the CAM operator copy it. This will cut down on the number of lines it will need to calculate and speed up the process. If your mold model has multiple cavities the bit will have to go up and down many times as it goes across to each cavity. Its better to have it cut one at a time so it can just go back and forth inside one cavity. (this is probably getting too confusing now). And the last tip I have is use the model if possible to cut the mold. This may not be possible for all designs. For instance, I gave the CNC Shop a model of a mold as opposed to the actual lure shape. If you can get away with it, use the lure shape. ( I couldn't because I needed to make some air vents, and expansion areas for part insert tolerances.) I have a couple more molds I would like made but at this rate it will take me a year to find someone who will do it and not charge an arm and a leg. Hope this helps some.

I am wanting to take some lure designs that i have drawn in 3D CAD and export them to a CNC machine and have an aluminum mold made. Thought it might be easier to start off with a blank Do-It Mold but wasn't sure. Does anyone have any experience doing this type of thing? Costs? Amount of work? Best way to do this? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.