[redg8r]

Ah..... Luke, Ive lured you to the darkside....

We used to have a member here by the name of XLR8N, we used to talk about injecting hard plastic & he gave me this link:
http://www.nhsouth.com/crafts/workbench/injector.htm

its a homemade, hand operated injector.

but for soft plastic,
I was fenagling with air pressure for injection rather than a cylinder or other "physical contact" cause I figured it would be easier to keep clean & maintain, but the site has some good descriptions.

I have a question, in the link above, the author spoke about wrapping nichrome wire around a brass or copper tube that held the plastic, then adding current to the nichrome wire. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wont that make the heating tube "live" or would the current stay within the wire?

If I could directly add the nichrome wire around my metal heating pot it would make much progress in my project.

Hey, Help! Is there an Electrician in the house!! :P

[Fireball Lures]

Ok red what does the wire physically look like? Is it copper inside and has an insulation like fiberglass on the outside? If so no it won't be live there is a company called Alto Shaam that uses this type of wire on there ovens I work on and it basically wraps around the oven in a maze. Never over lap the stuff though and never let it touch. It gets red hot and will burn itself up and go caboom. If your wire looks like this or if you're not sure post a picture and I can tell you if it is the same stuff sounds like it though. What we use to strap the stuff down is the metal tape you can buy at any HVAC supply house for ducting it's aluminum and we use a fiberglass cloth like used in supporting liquid fiberglass. Once you have it all together hook one line black wire to one end of the nichrome and the other end you can break using a thermostat power into tstat and the other wire out to the element when the tstat opens the circuit is opened. If the wire you have isn't what I'm talking about I can scrounge up some for you I think.

Nathan

[redg8r]

the nichrome I have looks just like spinnerbait wire.
it came in an uninsulated coil like what you get bulk spinnerbait wire in.
I think its a .36 guage

its nearly identical to the wire found in your toaster, but it is round in profile instead of flat. I looked in my toaster & saw the wire wrapped around what looked like a "circuit board" type of material.

[Fireball Lures]

You would have to have some sort of insulation in between the wire and the pipe. On the wire I was talking about it would work but what you are talking about I wouldn't try it it would get really hot really fast and I just wouldn't trust it. I'm going to build my machine to hold either 1/2 gallon or 1 gallon of plastic. Going to get a tank and use an element sort of like on the Lee pots, gonna use an external valve so I can add a motor driven agitator to the tank to keep it stirred up and speed up that part of manufacturing. If you are looking for elements or off the wall parts you can use for machines check here www.surpluscenter.com I found my pneumatic cylinders here and pretty cheap.

Nathan

[redg8r]

what you mentioned woul be what I'm ultimately lookin to do later,
hold more plastic, & add an agitator etc.

thanks for the info on the wire, I think I'm gonna try woven fiberglass cloth for insulating.

can you get inside a lee pot? the element they use, is it similar to an oven element? ya know, thick? like 1/4" dia.?

I use a lead ladle/pot from Hilts called "Hot 1" & it uses a thick element directly exposed to the lead.

[Fireball Lures]

Well I haven't taken one of mine apart but you can see the element on the outer edge of the pot cause it's exposed. It's thick like 1/4" and is round like a stove eye sort of. It's just a halo element 120 volt 500 watt so the data plate says 500 watt haven't took the element out so I'm assuming thats what it is. You probably want to use a small element in the 500 watt range so it doesn't get too hot to fast anything larger may cause hot spots and scortch plastic really bad. I've got alot of parts together and ready for some assembly think I will just build one now to pour into the del-mart senko style mold using just a gravity feed system like a lee pot until I can get some more information and idea's on the actual injectors I need to find a cylinder and figure out how much plastic should be in this thing when it compresses and how the vent the molds cause with that much force behind it the molds have to vent or the air will get trapped in the mold. Some of the machines I've looked at shoot the stuff in at over 30,000 psi thats a whole lot of pressure and I don't think I'm gonna go that big.

Nathan

[Fireball Lures]

Well the parts are rolling in for the new machine, just placed the order today for the pot that will heat the plastic. 4 Gallon capacity melter from a company called wennesco digital temperature read out, thermostatically controlled tanks, 500 watt, with a 1/2" pouring spout man this thing should flow some plastic. Oh by the way the cost on this tank was 300 bucks cheapest I found, had to get it custom made though it's a wax tank they are converting to plastisol for me. Might be a little more expensive than that but we will see when they get it done.

Nathan

[Fireball Lures]

*Update*

The Semi-Auto Fireball Pouring System is near it's finishing stages. The system is near complete and should be complete and ready for some serious testing in the next few weeks. The system will be a faster way to hand pour worms and I will have plans available once the machine has been tested. I also will be adding new features to this machine to make it even faster and eventually it will become an auto machine. I will keep you guys updated and I will get some pictures as soon as it's finished.


Nathan

[Tubeman]

Nathan, hows the hot pot from Wenesco working out for you. I just ordered a 5 gallon model from Ritehete and it will be very similar to yours, except it will have a 1/4 " value. Also what did it end up costing you, mine is going to run 500. as I had some mods done to it.

[Fireball Lures]

The pot is working great I didn't use that pot on this particular machine this one uses 4 Lee 420 production pots that is the bigger version of the pouring pot. The one from Wennesco ended up costing me $380 and it has a manual valve 1/2" but using it I ended up dropping it down to 1/4" by using adapters. I like it alot and use it for big runs of solid color pours. The machine is pretty simplistic and is basically a hand pouring helper if you will. I'm going to try to finish this baby up this weekend and get this show on the road.

Nathan