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May I ask how you do this, specifically? What machine do you use for injection molding, and how do you make the moulds? Very interested in doing this myself.

May I ask how you do this, specifically? What machine do you use for injection molding, and how do you make the moulds? Very interested in doing this myself. (Also interested in specific recommendations for a desktop pick n place if anyone has some)

15155 3y ago
https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/ https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/ or any similar Shenzhen special. Buy bigger over smaller. Buy, don't build. There will be a handful of recommendations for the Opulo Lumen/OpenPNP: avoid them. Avoid everything but ballscrew designs: you will spend an annoying amount of time trying to calibrate a belt-driven design and calibration will never stick. Please, do not make the mistake I did: get something with CL feeders, make this investment. Drag feeders are not good - they are slow and the stylus will violently shake parts out of reels (or you'll spend time calibrating it to try and avoid this issue - don't waste the time.) Get something that can do 0201, even if you don't use it. Ideally, get something that uses a separate, commodity host machine.
- simultsop 3y ago
  I thought the entire plan of independence is building yourself and not buying at all.
  - 15155 3y ago
    Independence is having the knowledge, skills, equipment to do it yourself if you had to - not doing something just because. I didn't build my vapor phase reflow oven, either. I'm trying to solve my own problems, not craft a basic piece of equipment for bragging rights; I just don't have the kind of free time to have things not work perfectly.
  - toast0 3y ago
    That works, maybe, if you're a giant of indusrtry... Hyundai doesn't have to buy ram for its cars, it can build it. But if you're small, you can't build most of what you need, and you should not build what you can buy that's better than whaf you can build, and you may as well buy things that you can build as good unless the cost to build is much less. Sometimes it's fun to build things instead of buying them, and that'a ok. But if your goal is to do X, you're better off spending time on X than spending time building tools you could have bought. (Unless building the tools builds requisite knowledge)
  - rfrey 3y ago
    There is no bright line on the DIY spectrum between that injection molder and making your own charcoal to refine iron. I love building machines - enough so that I never build anything with them. Maybe someday I will, but by then 15155 will have built hundreds of things.
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  Thanks for that. Drag feeders are exactly the type of thing I would try first time around, because I'm not sure what I'd lneed.
SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
I built a buster beagle. YouTube has a bunch of great guides from him plus what to buy. Mold making is a difficult science of itself. I can’t point you in a general direction beyond what worked for me. I started with OpenSCAD then moved to FreeCAD then eventually ended up with Fusion360. You need to have a vision for what you want to make, or else you won’t follow through till the end with learning. There is some dude from Texas who wrote a textbook on the subject that was invaluable for me in learning how to design oxygenation and cooling techniques. This is hardcore industrial engineering stuff, the kind of thing that you don’t casually do.if you’re trying to learn and do this yourself you need to not be afraid of doing some applied physics. There was a lot of crying and pain and trial and error for me to teach myself. If you know what you want I would instead go on fiverr or its equivalent of the day and hire yourself an actual mold designer and save yourself 90% of the pain and heartache that I went through. Mold designers are weirdly cheap for the insane amount of expertise they offer Printing the mold is another heartache of itself. I used anycubic photon with a flex plate and Sriraya resin. That was a journey all by itself - I originally started with insanely expensive Formlabs stuff before getting to the Anycubic solution. Again it took a lot of crying and trial and error to get it right. But it costs a mere fraction of what it costs to do it the normal way at least
- AussieWog93 3y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. There's probably $5,000 and 200 hours of tears saved just in this post.

15155 3y ago

https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/ https://www.smallsmt.biz/products/ or any similar Shenzhen special. Buy bigger over smaller. Buy, don't build. There will be a handful of recommendations for the Opulo Lumen/OpenPNP: avoid them. Avoid everything but ballscrew designs: you will spend an annoying amount of time trying to calibrate a belt-driven design and calibration will never stick. Please, do not make the mistake I did: get something with CL feeders, make this investment. Drag feeders are not good - they are slow and the stylus will violently shake parts out of reels (or you'll spend time calibrating it to try and avoid this issue - don't waste the time.) Get something that can do 0201, even if you don't use it. Ideally, get something that uses a separate, commodity host machine.

simultsop 3y ago
I thought the entire plan of independence is building yourself and not buying at all.
- 15155 3y ago
  Independence is having the knowledge, skills, equipment to do it yourself if you had to - not doing something just because. I didn't build my vapor phase reflow oven, either. I'm trying to solve my own problems, not craft a basic piece of equipment for bragging rights; I just don't have the kind of free time to have things not work perfectly.
- toast0 3y ago
  That works, maybe, if you're a giant of indusrtry... Hyundai doesn't have to buy ram for its cars, it can build it. But if you're small, you can't build most of what you need, and you should not build what you can buy that's better than whaf you can build, and you may as well buy things that you can build as good unless the cost to build is much less. Sometimes it's fun to build things instead of buying them, and that'a ok. But if your goal is to do X, you're better off spending time on X than spending time building tools you could have bought. (Unless building the tools builds requisite knowledge)
- rfrey 3y ago
  There is no bright line on the DIY spectrum between that injection molder and making your own charcoal to refine iron. I love building machines - enough so that I never build anything with them. Maybe someday I will, but by then 15155 will have built hundreds of things.
AussieWog93 3y ago
Thanks for that. Drag feeders are exactly the type of thing I would try first time around, because I'm not sure what I'd lneed.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago

I built a buster beagle. YouTube has a bunch of great guides from him plus what to buy. Mold making is a difficult science of itself. I can’t point you in a general direction beyond what worked for me. I started with OpenSCAD then moved to FreeCAD then eventually ended up with Fusion360. You need to have a vision for what you want to make, or else you won’t follow through till the end with learning. There is some dude from Texas who wrote a textbook on the subject that was invaluable for me in learning how to design oxygenation and cooling techniques. This is hardcore industrial engineering stuff, the kind of thing that you don’t casually do.if you’re trying to learn and do this yourself you need to not be afraid of doing some applied physics. There was a lot of crying and pain and trial and error for me to teach myself. If you know what you want I would instead go on fiverr or its equivalent of the day and hire yourself an actual mold designer and save yourself 90% of the pain and heartache that I went through. Mold designers are weirdly cheap for the insane amount of expertise they offer Printing the mold is another heartache of itself. I used anycubic photon with a flex plate and Sriraya resin. That was a journey all by itself - I originally started with insanely expensive Formlabs stuff before getting to the Anycubic solution. Again it took a lot of crying and trial and error to get it right. But it costs a mere fraction of what it costs to do it the normal way at least

AussieWog93 3y ago
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. There's probably $5,000 and 200 hours of tears saved just in this post.