I made this mold for a company in Orange County:
The mold makes these parts:
Things got slow at work so I made a billet skateboard:
And inlaid it with wood...
Stained it & rode it to the beach...
Then my neighbor took some studio photos of it:
Meanwhile back at work I got a new project: design a new recycled rubber road cone base:
Here's the mold I designed. The part cures at a 2:1 compression ratio in the lower half of the mold (the cavity). When the mold opens the part sticks to the top half (the core). A burst of air releases the part from the core.
The part extracted and ejected from the mold exactly like I designed it to, but we decided to float the part out with compressed air rather than pull it out with the opening motion of the press. - Something about the safety of launching 16lb. cured parts off of the mold?!? With the prototype proven & the design settled on we'll be starting production tomorrow on about 20 of these molds.
