A question about Blow Molds???

[ddgaff1132]

Hey yunz,
Has anyone thought about or considered trying to do Blow Mold items. Its Kinda like the reverse of vacu-forming.
For those who dont know about it. You take like a balloon of plastic attached to an air nozzle and heat it till the plastic is pliable. Then you enclose the plastic in a mold and inject hot air throught the air nozzle to force the plastic to conform to the inside of the mold.

The only hang up I have is how to get that Plastic balloon to start with.

[ctc]

Hmmmm....

I've considered it, but making the actual molds would be a huge pain. You'd probably need steel molds' even high rigidity, high thermal rubber ones might warp under the pressure.

Don C.

[ddgaff1132]

You dont think Plaster would be strong enough Don?

[ctc]

>You dont think Plaster would be strong enough

Well.... it MIGHT; if you had some way to regulate the pressure. High thermal rubber would be better. Plaster will crumble, and wouldn't hold any kind of detail. I know vinyl garage kits were popular in Japan back in the day, but I never found anyone who explained how they made the molds. They were definitely blow-molded.... or maybe suck-molded, but it amounted to the same.

Don C.

[LonnieFisher]

How about a two-part resin mold? I'm sure that would be strong enough. I've thought about trying to make a blow mold set-up, but have no idea where to get the plastic for it.

[ctc]

>How about a two-part resin mold? I'm sure that would be strong enough.

That might work too. The problem is that the heat and pressure would wear it down pretty quick.

>I've thought about trying to make a blow mold set-up, but have no idea where to get the plastic for it.

Years ago I had a friend who was trying to make a blow mold setup. For plastic he'd ....er.... "appropriate" the ads from the inside of the city busses. Fairly thick sheet plastic, you'd just have to paint over the pictures. (Or scrape them off.)

Don C.