"Desktop injection molding" Topic

Apparently this is a thing link

Apparently this is a thing link

At $4 USDk and six minutes a shot for a sprue that small it's got a long way to go before it's commercially viable for miniatures manufacturers.

Must admit that I know next to nothing about this sort of thing but wondered if this could catch on with the smaller manufacturers. Sounds like not until price goes down and capabilities go up.

I found an old "toy" that used to do exactly that. From the days when burning the house down was not a civil suit waiting to end a company.

The molds were a hard plastic and the plastic you used in the machine was almost like a harder wax.

Mattel had something similar. I recall trying to make Marx Ben Hur figures into molds.

Make something that can use scrap from plastic milk jugs to cast with and I'll be really interested in it… ;-)

Make something that can use scrap from plastic milk jugs to cast with and I'll be really interested in it… ;-)

And call it LactoMold … Actually, don't call it that :-)

I'm not sure that qualifies as a "thing", they give you a white paper in exchange for receiving spam.

The idea is pretty good, though I'm not sure how many people would find this useful. A few. You can do low volume runs just by owning a handful of 3D printers, so you really need one or both of the advantages this gives you: more choices of material and slightly smoother results.

Personal bench injection moulding machines have been used for decades e.g. to make scenery parts for model railroads. They look the same as the one in this kickstarter.

link

A few years ago there was a kickstarter for a semi-automated machine. It looked like this, but not as solid.

link