Leaderboard

hi! I printed it out of PLA, with 5 walls and 30% infill. the 5 walls were probably overkill. there wasn`t much pressure even pushing the center in, and the mold is SOLID. Here is an image of the cross section of the mold.. there is also a center plug and a tiny plug that sticks in the side, to create hole in the part that sticks out. here is all the parts, including the bolt that I used to squish the center in... essentially, since I wasn't pouring in material, I was injecting very slowly and painfully from a caulking gun, I slightly filled the bottom ridge (to avoid voids), then a ring around the bottom 1/3 in both halves (leaving the center part mostly empty, to be filled with the center plug) , like this: Then I put matted the two halves, put them in a vice (the holes on the side, with the square projections, are for nuts and bolts to hold the mold together, but ended up being too small) and pressed in the center bit in from the top, by hand at first, then finished it with the big bolt, through the center (with a nut under). that squished all the material up, filling almost all the mold without any voids. It would look like this (but filled and with a bolt running in the center, vertically): (the screws on top were for pulling the center out after it cured... it didn`t help actually, I wiggled it loose) After that, I pushed in the side plug (push then screw in the center plug) and filled the top from above. it worked out really well, with minimal waste.. I hope that's somewhat clear. if not, let me know what part isn't, and I`ll edit it to make sense.