Hand Crafted Angling

I heated it to the 400 degrees and injected it super slowly. That solved my air issues. Thank you very much!

Thank you, Ill give all of that a try

Finally got around to trying out the flex x 200 bait plastics makes. Stuff is extremely stretchy but I'm having some major issues with voids and dents. Out of 15 baits I had 2 that were functional. Not too many dents but massive hollow parts in the baits. I'm trying to figure out the issue. All my molds are made by me so it is definitely possible its just a venting issue however it works fine with plastisol so I don't think that's the issue. This is my first time using a pot instead of a microwave so maybe I'm doing something to add bubbles but I hardly saw any inside the plastic before I injected it. The only thing I can think of is a temp issue. I was shooting at 350-370. I don't think it would shoot any colder than that. They recommend up to 400 degrees but I would think going hotter would give me more issues. The only other thing I can think of is the outside temperature. Not sure if that makes a difference but it was 28 degrees in the shed where I now pour. If anyone could help me out I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you

Picked up an ear ball lure mold and want to star making some of those silicon skirts for them. Tried my hand at bucktail but I need some serious practice with that. I'm having issues with finding the skirt materials. I want to make something like this. I cant find any info on the bands though. All I can find is the band that just clamps around the skirt. I like the look of what I think is called a hub skirt where all of the skirt points back from the jig and none of it goes forward. I found what it looks like I need but for some reason I cant find it on any of the real deal tacklemaking sites. I only found what I am assuming is cheap Chinese ones off of amazon ebay and alibaba. There is no info on how to make skirts with them, what tools to use or what size they are. They will be used on large saltwater jigs. I would also like to know where I could find those large fins that would be a nice touch but not as important. Thanks

Posted back here a while ago about making some jig molds and what material out of. Decided on bondo as it seemed middle of the road on cost a durability. My plan is to make a mold of the mold on my 3d printer and cast that with bondo to make the jig mold. I did my first test run the other night. Mold was unusable anyway because I missed part of the mold box but I had an issue with air bubbles. There were holes in the finished mold right on the cavity of the jig. I’m not really sure how to eliminate them while pouring. I used bondo cut with fiberglass resin and Pam baking spray as a mold release. When I poured it I went slow and poured it in the empty space of the mold box. I didn’t really see many bubbles going in. Is there something I’m doing wrong?

I picked some up for personal use. Is the heat a problem for storage in a tackle bag? I wanted to make some large internally weighted swim baits and some saltwater stuff with it but if it melts that easy it might be a problem.

Never used this stuff before seems interesting though. Wonder how well it would work as a clear coat. My baits are plastic but as far as i am aware neither petg or polycarbonate are soluble in acetone. Wonder how well the paint would hold up though. I have no idea what I am talking about but isn't this what you are looking for? https://scipoly.com/shop/cellulose-propionate-cat-1077/ https://scrapo.com/p/27534/cellulose-acetato-propionate Also this topic did peak my interest and I did some reading about people using plastic cups for this. Polystyrene is what solo cups are made of and I know those pellets are readily available. I know abs is soluble in acetone that may work too.

I went way down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out how to make super stretchy and durable soft plastics and I've hit a wall. I figured id post what I have found here. All of these baits are made out of a thermoplastic elastomer. (TPE) This comes in the form of a plastic pellet that is melted down and injection molded. I've seen some different theories on here before that they are either two part plastic or made of some kind of thermoset rubber but this is not correct. I don't have any specific formulation but the plastic pellets are a mixture of some kind of oil a heat stabilizer and sebs plastic (Styrene-Ethylene-Butylene-Styrene) There are commercially available pellets with the correct hardness and elasticity but they are all made for traditional injection molding. They only need to be stable under heat for seconds rather than hours and they are injected under an order of magnitude more pressure than we use. I have tried testing some of these commercially available pellets and they do not react to heat well. Within 10 minuets the plastic turned yellow and my shop was filled with smoke. The only commercially available forum of this that I can find is Bait Plastics flex x 200. This is the same concept as the commercially available pellets it just has enough heat stabilizer to survive being melted for long durations and have a low enough viscosity to be hand injected. I wonder if large companies like zman use traditional injection molding or they have a formula similar to flex x 200 that would work in something like a Zorn injection machine. It is beyond me how you would get laminates as well as suspended flake through normal injection molding.

Are you topping off the sprew when it shrinks back in?

I had that issue caused by air getting into the mold. Are you sure you aren’t mixing any air in when mixing up plastic. Also burping the injector before injecting will help greatly

The softer the plastic is the more action the tail will have at the cost of durability

No seriously. Idk if anyone else had these as a kid but the material would be perfect for making soft plastic lures.

Interesting the molds I have are usually 5-10 minute demold times depending on size

I’m just curious how long you guys normally have to wait to demold your baits. I’ve only shot molds I resin 3d printed myself and I’ve never owned an aluminum one. I would imagine aluminum would cool off the plastic quite a bit quicker.

I appreciate all the help I’m gonna do some testing and see if it works. My plan is to resin 3d print a hollow air chamber attatched to the lure lip and then cast the alumilight around it. I will share in greater detail if it works out.

I greatly appreciate your help I will definitely use your recipe as a starting reference. I think I came up with a workaround for the lip and weighting problem but that gonna require a bunch of testing on my part. If all goes well I should be able to have transparent molded in lips along with ballast.

Thank you you make a great point of changing up the design process to suit the method. For making the mold I see no issue with just printing out a mold with the cad file I already made. It might be easier if I use a flexible plastic but that shouldn’t be an issue. Casting everything in one shot would definitely save me a ton of time. I guess I would just have to figure out the lips and ballast. For ballast I would rather cast it inside than drilling and filling holes. I’m sure I can figure out a way to suspend it inside. That would just leave the lip. I don’t really have the space to add a bandsaw to my shop it’s pretty tight as it is. The lip on that bait now is pretty thick as I had to beef it up in order to survive dropping. I wonder how it would hold up out of the resin but I’m guessing the only way to find that out is to test it.

Yes I am definitely interested if you don’t mind the hassle. This is one of the finished baits I make currently. Picture is of an older version new lip is thicker. Comes in at just over 7” and about 3.5oz. I wonder if it would be possible for me to cast the bait in two halves and epoxy them together kind of like I’m doing now. That way I can keep my rattle chamber and don’t have to figure out how to make a wire harness with ballast. I was hoping I can add an offset lip around the entire body for easy alignment.

Yeah that’s what I liked about the 3d printed lips is you can do custom shapes rather than just a flat piece of plastic. I might have to give the resin a try. What’s your guys adverage cost per lure body for a larger bait?

Instersting never really gave the resin much thought. Are you guys making the diving lips out of it too?

Yeah I have a few different baits that I am happy with the way they swim with a few more coming up the r&d ladder. I really started building baits because I wanted stuff that just didn't exist. I'm just trying to increase the ease of assembly on myself and maximize strength. I'm at the point now where I am happy with look and action I want to start doing some very small scale runs. Nothing commercial just enough for me and my buddy's to have a good time with. I already kind of went down the rabbit hole of the commercial to no avail. I was looking at the small production injection molding machines and although there are some cheaper hobby ones none are capable of doing what I want. So I am basically just trying to maximize what I can do with the machine I already have.

When I started learning how to use a 3d printer and learn how to make my own lures I had a goal in mind. I wanted my baits to be as close to a store bought lure as possible. I’ve been trying to keep the internals the same to mimic it. So far I’ve been adding ball bearings as weights inside the bait. To my knowledge most of the higher quality baits are made out of poly carbonate. I’ve mimicked this as best as I could by using a blend of polycarbonate. Although you can 3d print with it my printer doesn’t have the ability nor is it really viable cost wise at this time for my application. Instead of gluing the halves together I’ve moved onto solvent welding. I believe this is the process used by professional lure makers. I’ve also moved on to using figure 8 hook hangers. This seems like the most common method of hook and line attachment. Unfortunately I think I’ve hit a wall here. 3d printing has limitations with not only strength but tolerances and the required support structures. I was wondering if anyone here had experience making injection molded baits that could help me out. I was wondering how thick the walls are in general on commercially made baits. I would like to see how close to that I can get away with. I’m sure it’s a crapshoot and all proprietary info but if someone had some pictures of an unassembled bait that would help me immensely. I’m assuming commercially made baits have some sort of alignment system with a male and female half. Unfortunately this may be hard for me to implement so far I’ve just been using the hook hangers as alignment pins.

I run an ended 6 now. So it is a stock enclosed printer. I did a few prints on my ended 3 with no warping but I’m not sure how a lure would work out with no enclosure.

I highly recommend this fillimate. It’s a poly carbonate petg blend that prints like petg except much stronger. I make all my hardbaits out of it. I also prototype all my soft plastics in it as it can handle the heat and is much cheaper than resin. Can’t beat the price either. https://www.amazon.com/Transparent-Filament-Dimensional-Accuracy-Polycarbonate/dp/B075SY4YRD/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?crid=5YF49QRNN9Z7&keywords=polycarbonate+filament&qid=1690203804&sprefix=polyca%2Caps%2C167&sr=8-7