Little Creeper Baits

If you are saying you made your own chamber from a plastic bucket and it has a window made of sealed plexiglass please don't try it. If you are actually able to get a vacuum going you will probably have a catastrophic failure and you could be badly injured. Your home vacuum won't give you enough suction to do the job anyway, but if it does somehow you be seriously hurt. You can use a steel or aluminum pot with a thick (3/4") lid. Check out Best Value Vacs. Just be careful with making your own chamber. A failure can be live threatening.

Dave I use ZBrush as my program. This is a digital sculpting program. You can use whatever program you find best, but the printer is a Form1+ fromlabs. It is an SLA type printer. This the only type of printer that can do a good job with models. And it is amazing and easy to use. The printer costs about $3,000. Each print is about $2 - $5 depending on size. Normal extrusion printers cannot do the job to produce an accurate model. I own an AirWolf printer as well. Great printer but it can't do what the Form1 can do.

I can't see your pics, but there is an unbelievable amount of air in silicone. If you degass it will almost double in volume during the process. Even in our vacuumed silicone molds we still get a very faint artifact like you describe in the the first pour or sometimes the second that is caused by air in the mix. I sent you PM call me if you to talk about this. I am on west time but I'm up pretty late.

Just re read your post. It sounds like there are air bubbles in the silicone just outside of the surface of the mold. This creates an artifact like are describing because the hot plastic pulls the air toward the surface and leaves a dent. You need to make sure to burn in a silicone mold. Run a few pours through it this will toughen the surface and also take away the dull finish. All of our molds are burned in for at least two pours, and we reuse the plastic. Vacuuming the silicone helps a lot but you still need a little burn in time with silicone. I hope this helps. Benno

Hey one-off not sure what type of silicone you are using, or what your model is made of but platinum cured silicone can be problematic with certain materials. Curing on platinum silicone can be inhibited by a wide range of material. Having said that I still think it Is the best for making molds. I buy from Reynolds Advanced Materials. They carry Smooth on products. I have tried almost all of them. I like the Sorta Clear 18 for most molds and masters.

Thanks One-off. I am actually getting ready to make new versions of the Trash Fish and the Sun Fish on the computer. Once they are done I am going to make a larger version of the Sun Fish to fit a 10/0 beast. So it is coming sometime next year. Good luck with your project. Feel free to message or even call me if you have any questions. I have done a ton of mold making, and have made about every mistake possible. Benno

I have made all of my models from clay. I hand sculpt it. It is what I am best at. The best clay I have found is Super Sculpy Extra Firm Gray. Once the master is done it is baked per directions. You need to be careful to support it into the proper shape while baking to prevent sagging. Once it is hard you can sand or finish the detail and bake again. The original mold is always silicone. I recently switched to a digital sculpting program and print the masters. This new set up is not much easier for the original but once it is done you can make changes without losing the original. Often I will need to make many changes to get what I am after. With the computer changes are much better, and you can change the size when you print instead of trying to replicate the original in another size.

thanks Mark. If you could fish these bugs I think you would love them too. I just hope we can find a way to get them out there. If not at least we will have some for ourselves and a few friends.

Yeah my problem is I design first. Get a prototype that does what I want it to and then try to make molds. Our swimbaits are very different and work very well but they are hand poured 3D. Injecting is another animal. I am trying to prove concept for making the molds. I understand the compromises that need to be made in order to have them cut from aluminum, I am just not willing to make them. I may make small changes to get better molds but texture and action are something I won't change just to get a bait on the market. If I can't get them done then, oh well, we will just continue to make swimbaits. I love to make bugs though and would like to make them for the public. Unfortunately our baits will need to be expensive because of our production methods. I just want them to be different enough to be worth the money they will have to cost. The creature bait market is so competitive from a price stand point that it is pointless to get into it unless what we bring to the table is different enough to be worth it. We will never be able to compete for the mass market. We will be happy to make smaller amounts and be original, then hope enough people like them to add one more design to our line up. We will never get rich doing this. We just want to do things that add something new and effective, then let the market decide our fate.

Here are a couple of screen shots of the baits I am talking about. These are the first designs I have done on a computer. These are screen shots from the program. The models are 3D Printed on a Form1 printer. I have been really happy with the results so far. Not much easier to design on a computer but much better for prototyping with out losing original detail, or for for making different sizes.

I appreciate the responses. I should have mentioned that I run a small bait company ( Little Creeper Baits ) and have a lot experience making molds. We primarily make swimbaits, and I make all of our molds for them. I am trying to make some creatures I have designed and as someone mentioned undercuts and texture are the difficulty for cutting into aluminum. I have been able to make an original mold from silicone. But silicone will not work for a final mold material. My issue is with making the mother for reproducing my production molds. A clay bed two part will not work with the complexity of the design. No way to be 100% accurate with the parting line. I am now making a solid silicone mold and cutting it in half. The issue has been silicone to silicone reproduction. They just don't come apart cleanly enough. I am about to try a urethane reproduction once the material arrives. I want to make my final molds from a heat resistant resin. I am not too worried about the resin material. There seem to be many that could work. The temp of plastic comes down so fast that even smooth cast 300 has been working for prototype molds without any issues. The problem is producing molds that don't have any or at least a tiny amount of flash at the seems. For production I can't spend a ton of time cleaning each bait. Thanks for the feedback.

I am trying to make some hard molds to produce some original designs. The designs are apparently too difficult to have made in aluminum. I have tried a few things and am getting decent results but have not been able to produce a mold that I consider worthy of production. Just thought I would ask if anyone has tried to make good production worthy molds themselves and succeeded. My main problems have come with making the masters to actually reproduce a good set of molds from. I've been working with silicone mainly with resin as a final mold material. I am about to try urethane for the master. Any good methods would be helpful. Thanks, Benno