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howdy, all- not a fisherman, unless you count a wicked sunfish i caught when i was 9, but I am a tool designer/CAD modeller who's playing with some fairly novel 3d printing materials that can produce cheap/quick molds suitable for plastic injection molding, and even some lower-temp metal casting. I can only print small tools, though, and I've struggled to find a popular application or field where people have a legit need for small, low-quantity bespoke parts made from 'engineering-marginal' materials like thermoplastics or lead-bismuth-tin alloys. Enter tacklecrafting. I've been a metalworker of one description or another for 10+ years at this point, so I know where I'm at with metal-casting and metal goods; i’m starting with sinkers because they’re pretty self-evident. soft lures, though, soft lures are mysterious and subtle. not arrogant enough to think i can design these myself, but for starters i can try adapting and building tools from other people’s lure designs to test-drive some finished tools, and work from there Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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Jul 10, 2021 20:39
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:This is such an interesting and intriguing project. I only have experience melting lead, so the low temp stuff is interesting. Is the alloy as dense/heavy as lead? I was just thinking if any of the jigs or sinkers would need to be larger to accommodate the difference in physical properties. I'd love to see this work, and I hope someday that 3-D printing materials can handle lead temperatures since the low temp alloys seem to be 15-20x the price of lead. Don't forget how often people lose lures and sinkers when they're fishing! So for metal work it's pretty much a curiosity for me until then, but 3-D printed molds for open-pouring soft plastic baits would be a very good application for this. For those playing at home, the reason I (probably) can’t use straight lead here is because of the material constraints of the printing process, and by how melting temperatures are impacted by alloying. I’m producing molds with a UV-curing resin printer, which offers excellent fine surface detail and a finished dimensional accuracy within a couple thousandths of an inch. All 3d printed acrylate resin prints have poor thermal resistance- but a new resin (Siraya Tech Sculpt Ultra) intended for plastic injection molding has recently hit the market, and it boasts an impressive heat resistance of losing no mechanical strength at 220C (although the manufacturer has informally told me that it can take significantly higher temps before suffering damage). This new heat-resistant tooling resin opens up practical metal casting using directly-printed tools for the hobbyist- if you can compromise a little. And re: the alloy thing- Why not lead, right? Pure lead melts at a relatively (by our standards) high temperature around 325C, over 100C+ our resin’s rated heat resistance, which is probably an issue- but when you alloy lead with almost anything it’s melting point drops, often dramatically. When we talk about low-melting alloys, we mean those with sub-pure lead melting points. solder is probably the most common example, with other examples being esoteric and rarely seen. these low-melting alloys are best described as lead-bismuth-tin alloys that are formulated for various specialized purposes, most of which do not involve fishing or tackle making. i currently work with two, sourced for a rapid tooling/prototyping process i’ve been developing as an ongoing personal project. i’ve mostly worked with a 60:40 tin:bismuth alloy (melts at 281f ), notable because it does not shrink or expand after casting like most of these alloys, making it ideal for accurate part reproduction in electroplating mandrels, which is what I wanted it for originally. I also have a “48% Bismuth, 28.5% Lead, 14.5% Tin, 9% Antimony” alloy (melts at 217f) which is extraordinarily strong and resistant to creep under sustained pressure, which makes it perfect for use as a cast rapid tooling material or for anchoring tool/die components, which is what General Electric developed it for in the 1950s. I wanted it for hydraulic press tooling, letting me rapidly cast custom/short-run sheet metal forming dies from 3d printed molds, which would in turn let me, as an artisan, economically and rapidly execute small-medium-scale production runs of small embossed sheet metal goods such as jewellery, plaques/embossed art, belt buckles, as well as functional/engineering applications like project enclosures, embossed metal controller/display panels, weird rf antennas, conformal electrodes for the electroforming mandrel thing, etc etc. you can make half of anything useful to mankind from stamped metal sheet, the only limits beyond what i can think up and CAD model are the (currently quite small) build volume of my printer, and the hydraulic press’ bed size and tonnage. none of that has to do with fishing, but it’s where i’m coming at this from. for fishing, we care primarily about cost and density, and whether you’re using lead or wanna go lead-free. a cheap lead-bearing alloy is https://www.rotometals.com/roto212f-low-melt-fusible-bismuth-based-alloy-ingot/ , melts at a cool 212F and costing ~$13USD per pound, with a density around 75% that of pure lead’s. a lead-free high-density option is https://www.rotometals.com/lead-free-fishing-tackle-weight-bismuth-tin-alloy-281/ 281F, 75% lead’s density, $18Usd, and is far more castable + workable than pure bismuth without compromising on density much. and to come back to this, can lead work with the molds i’m looking to make? possibly! hopefully but not necessarily! i haven’t experimented with it myself, other people who’ve made bullet/pellet molds say that you can get damage depending on the mold geometry/the casting size and/or if the mold isn’t allowed to cool off between parts. i’m erring on the side of assuming low-melting alloys are a given here, but i’d like to experiment to see how close i can fly to the sun wrt pourin lead Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 19:14
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Would help to have some examples of what I can do with this, here's some stuff I've been experimenting with as I figure the process out the highlights for tackle are: compared to conventional mass-produced cast aluminium jig/lure molds, my approach i can capture exponentially more detail in a given part size + the surface finish of cast parts from the mold is far, far finer than what you'll get with . the fine surface finish + the soft base metal makes it very easy to buff the 60/40 alloy to a nice mirror polish by hand with some 0000-fine steel wool, for some visual flash; the precision of the cast parts also allows the casting of close-fitting mechanical assemblies that can replace, to some extent, wire fabricated parts like clevises and pivots, etc etc        this plumb bob turned out great, of course i never got a good picture before sending it on its merry way as a gift. i can swap the text plate out to alter the personalized engraving at will so i'm gonna get a lot of future gift mileage from it 
Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jul 13, 2021 |
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Jul 13, 2021 20:04
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A Pack of Kobolds posted:The only project that I can think of involving metal work is jigging raps. Seems like it would be the perfect lure for the effort: this way you don't have to gently caress with hooks and things, you'd be able to make a fair few of them with a pound of turboexpensive alloy, and they will require a wire form to cast around so you could go hog wild designing that. When I look up jigging raps, almost all of them have what looks like integrated/cast-in-place hooks, at least at the front/back. Or did you mean something more like this-  (not saying that's specifically a jigging rap) where eye-loops are provided for furnishing your own hooks? e: actually, looking at bulk lead jigging lures, they all seem to have a crimp somewhere on the hook-line-  is there a slot that that the hook is placed into and then crimped to fix it? I wouldn't think you'd need the crimp with a pure cast-in-place arrangement. Ambrose Burnside fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jul 16, 2021 |
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Jul 16, 2021 17:42
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