Design and Purchasing

Please disregard the idiots.

Wood flower, or fine sawdust, could be used as a filler in liquid casting systems. I would not recommend trying to injection mold it, if your machine is set up for thermoplastic molding.

This sounds more like a pour it in a rubber mold, degass and cure operation.

You'd want a metal "master" around which you would cast the rubber mold.

So, back to you. I'm not really sure what you have or what process you are trying to use.

I want to make a wood case that will be 6.5 cm long and 2.75 wide. I am sure you have seen knife handles made of this material that looks like wood.

The chrome end caps are metal and pinned on. I gather what you said that if we could located an injection machine setup for wood Flour parts have been made like this in the past by injection molding. I have the flour located however no one wants to make small parts. They all make flooring and panels. Right now we are producing on CNC which is costly and time consuming

Hi Lyn,

Your suggestion is the best. The liquid pour in moulding system works well. I used with Portland Cement, plaster, and combinations of both. I mixed wood flour or sawdust with water to wet it, or/and with a special latex solution, and completed with sands and cement or cement/plaster mix. The fluid, free flowing material was poured into a silicon or PU mould and let cure. The final product can be lighter than without sawdust and is more compact and resists to shocks (fibres) more than without.

The weight of the final object can be cut to half or more by replacing or eliminating sands (the heavy ingredients in the compositions).

I make waterbourne stains and sealers to make attractive and decorative the objects.

Nice to see your involvement, Gil.

Thank you for your in put. Sounds like one would have to play with the mixtures. however that is no problem. Let me ask you, does the end product look like wood and feel like wood when finished with stain. I believe your both are correct that molding is the way to go

Actually the answer lies in the middle, you cannot injection mould glue based mixtures as thin pressure lines are required and they would set solid very quickly between runs, and you would have to flush the lines with solvents between runs to get out the glue, and then have a solvent remover run through so the first batch had no solvent traces destroying the glue/binder.

The pour mould is the right answer however, it works much like an injection moulder from an overhead flow nozzle, like watching margarine being filled into containers. Mould fillers have a set amount that is forced into the mould from above and there is one or more top air beaks that allow the fluid to be forced through under only a small amount of pressure, the time mechanism or flow controller stops the fill as the content reaches the air outlet, this knob is removed by hand when finishing.

there are several types of setups you can use, hot flow or warm flow is best, this means the binder is fluid when warm and sets quickly when cold, so there is water running through the mould the same as plastic moulding, the machine cycle time is set to allow solidification, metal moulds are fine and they are made by tool makers who make plastic moulds, both parts can be in the same mould, a mould costs around 5000 average.

you could start with a mould and hand fill them, to get you mix right first, that would be my call before spending bigger bucks.

Then go to a rotational table with an overhead fill, any automation crew could build it easily, have say ten moulds on the circle, it fills and turns the table to the next, the next stage after fill is two pins come down and press both the fill point and air exit hole compressing the contents, the next step the mould opens, the next step is the item drops onto an underneath conveyer to be picked up and placed on drying racks for time or kiln dry, next step clean of injector/fill knobs and air hole knobs, stain and varnish as required.

Making items with machinery is relatively simple, whether you would ever sell 250,000 dollar worth of them over 5 years to get enough profit to pay for the machine alone is another matter, not to mention materials and labour.

A great design or invention is not stupid because it doesn't make money or pay for itself, it simply means there are not enough people who need your clever invention or design to warrant the expense. So if you decide it is not financially viable, does not make your effort in design foolish. If the numbers are small stick with a professionally made mould and hand fill and press them

Archie