Press molding heated sprue?

[Chuckt5]

I want to try and make a female mold in resin of bolt heads to then press a heated sprue into. This would hopefully give me a male plastic bolt head which I could then slice off of the cooled down sprue and use with regular plastic cement in adding extra detail to what ever I may be working on.

My question is, do you think this will work and will the resin mold have any issues with hot sprue being pressed into it?

I know there used to be a company who made some metal molds for this purpose, but they seem to be long out of bussiness and the molds impossible to find.

What do you guys think?

[Edo]

Hi there!
I have never used resin moulds, but the idea seems like working.
What I do is to drill a hole of the appropriate size into a PE fret and then press a molted sprue onto it. The result is a round bolt nice and simple...
Let us know how it turns out!
Good luck!
Ciao
Edo

[kornbeef]

I see no reason why it should cause issues. Alternatively you may try epoxy putty like Milliput, that shouldnt suffer with heat distotion as much as Resin may. Or give off fumes either... something to consider, though I doubt the temperature would be that high in fact.

In fact its such a good I dea I may pinch it...

Keith

[IvotB]

Perhaps there is one thing to consider, but trial and error will probably sort that out. The thing I wonder about is how are you going to avoid an air bubble in the mold when pressing the heated sprue into the mold? Such an air bubble will be trapped and cause a disformed part.

When using rubber moulds and pouring resin into it, the bubbles will be there too. With casting of brass, bronze or white metal there are always air shafts in the moulds to release any air trapped inside.

For small bolt heads the problem may not occur.

regards,
Ivo