TOPIC:

My newest welding/machinery project has been a Roto Molder. I built it at work to rotate a mold to make a hollow casting either with silicone rubber of urethane plastic.

Check out a video of it in operation:



What do you think?

Bill

Interesting Bill, What are you going to mold up with this?

Very clever use of sprockets, chains, right-angle drives to get multi-axis rotation. I love stuff like this!

Hi John,
I built this to support the effort of a coworker who wants to be able to cast hollow plastic and silicone rubber projects. The first motor was sourced from a hospital bed but it overheated within a few minutes so I ditched the gearmotor and fitted a half horse motor to my own system of belts and chains.

This time it's dependable.

Bill

Looking forward to hearing how well the first molded products turn out. Curious as to how you counter balance out for irregular shaped molds.

Kawboy wrote: ...Curious as to how you counter balance out for irregular shaped molds.

For smaller molds (12 to 15 LBS) I'm thinking that the mechanism will handle it. Larger projects will have to be counter balanced or the wood plate will have to go so that the mold can be centered. At this point I'm only guessing I've never done hollow castings.

Bill