captdale

Do wear protective clothing when injecting hot plastic !!! .Gloves, face shield. I had an injector nozzle break off under pressure. Squirted about three oz. of 350 deg plastisol all over the place. Lucky it was away from me or I would still be in the hospital !!

Thanks Mark, I do too. Long and expensive process and the competition is brutal. Bass Pro lawyers got all over me when I TM'd some of the designs years ago. I changed it and they backed off. With all the micro surface mount parts out now you can make stuff really small. And cheap. Best i've done so far is $.92 each lure complete and that is buying parts in very small quantities. Just use parts that go into cell phones and iPads. There are a kazillion of them so the price is really cheap compared to parts that are not normally used. If they can put all that stuff in a iPad about the size of a fat credit card, you could fold it in half and stick the whole thing in a spook. Or put it on a flexible pcb and roll it up like a pencil and stick it in a lure. iPad in a lure. Thats an idea LOL There are some nice lures out there that this would work really well with but they can't do that as this is a utility patent. I.E. - the patent is not on what it looks like but what it does and how it does it !! I would not mind partenering with some of them but haven't explored that path yet. Just saying. Anyway, the saga continues. CD

Hi Rixon - Thanks. Got my start in the U.S. Army electronics school in 1960 when I was 19 !! Now you know how old I am >LOL< Long and interesting work all over the world. And I love to fish for bass so had to happen. Compulsive excessive for sure. About got the bugs worked out of the soft (plastisol) hollow lures so that pleases me. The forum led to some really good "tricks" of the trade which really helped. I'll post some pics when I get something worth showing. CD

Thanks Mark. Yes they do look good. They were painted by Oscar Chilton. They look pretty innocent but not so. Each lure has a inplanted microchip that detects when the lure is in the water and turns on a sound playback via a 12mm waterproof speaker. What ever actual live critter sound I programmed it with. I did the underwater stuff with a hydrophone and the shore stuff with a small parabolic antenna with a mic at the focal point. Frogs go "ribbit", crayfish make a "click click click" sound, etc. It will play back one cycle each time you twitch the line. Has a motion sensor. Runs off a micro Lithium cell that is recharged by placeing the lure in a magnetic inductance cup charger so no wires. Like a electric toothbrush. And best of all they do catch Bass. The ones in the pics are mostly top water especially good early spring but also good anytime up by the bank, lily pads, grass etc. I received a patent on these about a week ago. Long, complex and expensive undertaking but that is why I got into it in the first place. I fished the shallow water lures for the first time at Lake Fork last March and they did really good. I'll go back next March and do some videos and see if I can't sell the patent. We will see. I'm thinking I might show them at the ICAST in Las Vegas in July. .

Hi TU - Yes, Some of them are hollow body soft plastic. (plastisol). cd

Frank - great. thanks. I've now got a couple of options. I have most of the spike it colors and a bunch of alumidust colors so it will work out for sure. Also have a patsch airbrush but to be honest am not an artist so need to practice up on that. Also can inject various base colors and put detail on that. so - lots of options. Either paint the mold or paint after injection or perhaps little of both. Will be a fun challenge. Now need to read up on how to use the airbrush. I'll post pics in about a month when I get it all going. Right now am waiting on the mold. thanks. CD

Frank - I have an aluminum mold. Do I coat it lightly with any mold release before spraying highlites or just spray the clean mold ? CD

Hi Frank - Thanks. Thats exactly what I wanted to know. I had seen the highlites which mimiced the detail after clearcoat so it looks like you haven't lost the detail. That will work. I'll experiment with various options . I do have my base color down pat. Thanks. CD

Frank - your not suggesting painting the mold before I inject are you ?? CD

Frank - Thank you. I was talking about the exterior of the lure out of the mold. I watched Dahlberg using alumidust and he dipped the lure after moilding. Mine has real nice exterior detail I didn't want to loose that after airbrushing so this is good news. Have to "brush up" on my airbrush talents big time. Oh, so much fun, so many fish, so little time LOL thanks. CD

Okay, so I make my highly detailed soft lure and airbrush it with the spike it paint. If I now dip it in plastisol will I not loose the fine external detail ??

Anybody ever use any micro one way vents (valves) on injection to keep the medium from running out ?? CD

Well lets see if I can download some of my "creations" LOL That should work. Enjoy. CD

Hi J Lure - Yes I can share a lot of info learned by trial and error over the last five years or so. I have no connection with Galomb other than I own one of his machines. It is most excellent for that purpose. Have only done hard plastic lures (complex hollow body two part glued together) with it so far but have no doubt I can also do soft. If I can figure out how to attach pics I will do so of some of the lures I have made. The machine as it is now is limited to 1 cu. inch of material, enough for a four inch zara spook type or similar. I think the price is right at $2K at this time. His mold forms are expensive but you can make your own out of extruded aluminum in a rectangular shape very cheap. I have made minor modifications to the machine so that it takes about 2.5 cu in of plastic and a bigger mold. I.E.- larger cavity and piston. For soft plastics the best I have seen for small lures is the do-it clear plastic molds and hand injectors but they refuse to tell me who makes those molds. Somebody should be able to hack that. I wanted whatever company that did that to make me a custom mold. Check out the utube videos i think posted by jannstackle or do-it ? Impressive. If you have access to a CNC shop and have a more complex , high detail , custom design you can have the design 3D scanned by Exact Metrology for the CNC IGES and/or STP files for around $800 then have a small custom mold made by a CNC shop for approx $1000. I was able to get two patents doing that. Not cheap but cheapest I could find for that serious direction. Of course now I'm broke but hey, can't take it with you LOL. I'll try to post some pics later when I get on my other computer. There is a nitch market for this type thing if you have a lure design that really works. A lot of guys zip lock bag the lure with their company name and address on it and sell them to the small mom and pop, 7-11 type stores close to major fishing areas and post them on line. They give some to the local guides also. When they really do work the word of mouth is best ever. Most of the major lure companies that have lures patented have a design rather than a utility patent so yours has to be at least 10% different than theirs. I.E.- feet flat rather than fat, feet going left rather than right , eyes bulging rather than sunken Etc. Sorry for the rambling post. Later CD

Hi Frank. Thanks. I'm looking into using PTE rather than Plastisol. Anybody doing that ? CD