Hey, has anyone ever heard of this stuff? http://www.shapelock.com/ It's hard nylon-like plastic at room temperature, but if soaked in 150 - 160 degree water it's shapeable. It has about a million possibilities, but all the applications I want to use it for (like radio knobs or shifter handles, or under-hood stuff) can get well over 150 degrees in the summer or winter. Anybody know of anything similar, but of a higher melting point? ~Jason
There used to be a product advertised in Hemmings that was a bondo-like shapeable substance that the ad said when you got it shaped the way you wanted it it would accept chrome, like it said you could repair holes in chrome trim and such then have it re-chromed..I always wanted to try that stuff
You could mold some little door handle parts or something out of it, then make a two part plaster mold off of the plastic piece, then bake out the plaster mold and use that to pour melted low temp metal into to make a metal part. When I was a kid I used to make little skulls and stuff out of tin -- the old metal toothpaste tubes used to be made out of solid tin, also some cheap little toys were made of tin. I would melt the tin in a tuna fish can on the stove, and then pick up the can with pliers and pour the liquid tin into a plaster mold. You have to bake out the plaster first to dry it out otherwise it boils and puts bubbles in the metal. Or sometimes I would melt pieces of old lead type (like they used to use in linotype printing presses) in a can and make stuff out of it. I even made some dimes and quarters that I cast out of lead in two part molds. They look like the real thing, but don't jingle when you drop them on the table -- they just land with a thud. I guess lead isn't exactly safe to work with because it's toxic, but they sell some low temperature casting alloys that you can melt on a stove.
If you want to make plastic parts that won't melt at 150, try Plastex (http://plastex.home.att.net/). It's not as easy to work with as this Shapelock stuff, but it's pretty durable. dan
Not plastic, but maybe still of interest. May be good for duplicating parts and making molds for plastic casting. Cerrosafe is used by gunsmiths to make chamber dies, etc. It melts between 158-190 degrees, so you can heat it on the stove. Quote from Brownell's website, "Cerrosafe shrinks during the first 30 minutes of cooling and then at the end of an hour, is EXACTLY chamber size. At the end of 200 hours it will have expanded approximately .0025". Can also be used over and over. http://www.brownells.com/aspx/NS/store/ProductDetail.aspx?p=384&title=CERROSAFE%7e+CHAMBER+CASTING+ALLOY This place sells it for $18 a lb, about $5 cheaper than Brownell's. http://www.buffaloarms.com/browse.cfm/2,121.html
Sculpy. Works like Butter.Bake it in the oven at 225, or whatever the instructions say.Sets up hard,but still sandable. Available in 1lb sizes more reasonably that the small colored packages.
Crap - I actually have some here! Boy, now I feel stupid. My wife used to make small sculptures of Santas and fairys and such out of it. The fairy wings she did in a style called "millefiori", which involves layering flattened sheets of many different colors of Sculpy in a stack, rolling it up, and cutting off slices, like making cookies. It comes out looking like marble or something, and it's pretty cool. ~Jason
www.alumilite.com I've been making reproduction parts (airdam brackets) that are No Longer Available from BMW for about a year now. Made them for myself and now about 40 other guys can mount their parts as well. machineable and used in under hood applications. You can paint the mold before pouring the resin and it will bond to it.
Check out the 'Smooth-On' line of liquid plastics: http://www.smooth-on.com/default.htm It's a catalyzed product and it can be tinted in a gazzillion colors (even transluscent and metallics).
About ten years ago while passing through Tucson, I went to one of the airplane museums out there. It was the afternoon, and I don't know how hot it got outside in the U-Haul, but when I returned the pager I had clipped to the sun visor (and forgot about) had a totally black screen and was too hot to touch (I couldn't believe it)! Thankfully it recovered before I got to Roswell, but this has always been a benchmark for me as to how hot it gets inside a car in the summertime. It had to be well over 200 degrees in there. But then again, I didn't have a thermometer in the vehicle. Maybe this summer I'll park the car outside and put a meat/cooking thermometer in there so I can see it from the window. Hell, maybe I'll set it on the dash. It'll look weird, but will provide a lot of answers towards exactly how hot it gets in there. ~Jason
here are some parts we made out of alumilite, its kinda spendy but it was fun and worked good - these are parts for an old pop cooler...
l I was thinking this would be good to make bends in tubing then heat it up to liquifiy it and remove it. Ed ke6bnl
Good concept, I wonder if it would bend in it's cured state? What about casting balls the I.D. of your tubing and forcing them in there, make your bend, then melt 'em out? That would come close to what my understanding of how"mandrel bending" sort of works, not exactly, but the wheels are definitely turning now...
I worked at a crafts supplies wholesaler in the 80's and we carried this stuff Friendly Plastic. Apparently they went out of business in '89 but there is plenty of the stuff around. it melts in warm water, but it starts getting soft at about 100 degrees, not good for any type of automotive application unless you keep your car in an air conditioned garage, and only drive it in the winter. Looks like it's the same material as the little beads that guy is selling.
Not to thread jack, but since it was mentioned....years ago there was a tech article in American Rodder on how to bend tubing evenly. They welded a plug across at one end, packed DRY sand into the tube as tight as you could get it and finally, drove a wooden plug in the open end. To bend the tube, they heated the area evenly with a torch and bent to their heart's content. When finished, simply pull the wood plug, clean out the sand and cut off the welded plug. Quick and easy!
Yes,that works well. http://www.thefabricator.com/TubePipeFabrication/TubePipeFabrication_Article.cfm?ID=721 They make several alloys,with different characteristics. www.mcmaster.com carries them.
Sand bent exhausts are meant to be better because many benders will leave you with a reduction of tube diameter at the bends
I make my own plastic parts for the junior cars that I deal with. Since no one else made parts years ago I had to learn how and started making parts for them using silicone rubber molding. The process is so good that you need to wipe down your master mold part really good as it will even reproduce your fingerprints. Below are some of the parts I make. follow this link to see the cars I make them for http://www.jrcentral.com The steering wheels were the first thing I made and I have probably made almost a hundred of them by now. They have a cast in steel hub that is knurled to keep the wheel from spinning and undercut to keep from pulling off. I have only had one report of one being broken and the guy said he grabbed it to stop the car from rolling down hill so that was a lot of force. I use polytek products and have been happy with them. many of the products are 1:1 mix ratio so that stops the improper mixing problems. The parts shown below are all fresh from the mold with mold flash still attached. The round thing with the steering wheels is a 1966 Mustang JR hubcap form that I use on my vacuum former to make reproduction hubcaps just like the originals. And the pony and corral are 1966 Mustang JR exact replicas The Plymouth nameplates are 1959 Plymouth Fury JR nameplates that are missing on most cars since they just glued them on and the 66 Thunderbird grille emblem shows most of the process. Top is the original that was busted in two mounted to a board then temporary clay repairs were made. The sides were formed with foamboard and the mold was poured. Center shows the part as cast with mounting screws attached and the ends of the mold supported to give the bird some curvature to fit the original grill. and the bottom is one formed flat with no mount scews to test the mold. If I had to make corrections I would have made them on this new plastic piece then made another mold since the new piece can be sanded, polished and machined. These are just a few of te part I make and I am making some more molds this weekend while siting on my couch watching TV. The process is great for small production run jobs. And yes they make clear red plastic to make reproduction lenses also. Now if you guys are interested I can talk about short production run zinc diecast parts?
I worked for a company that was purchased by UPS to develop products and technologies for package delivery and handling. In looking at various types of "package car" devices, we needed to understand the environment inside of the package car or delivery truck. To do so we set-up a temperature monitoring device in a closed deliery truck in Arizona (I believe it was Phoenix) through the hottest summer days. Peak "air" temperatures were 160+. We did not measure surface temperatures of the dashboard but it's safe to say that they would have been much higher depending on location, color, surface finish, material type, etc. Keep in mind that the highest temperature an item can reach and still be hand-held (very briefly) by a person is 150 F. - EM
Roadkill, That original T-Bird emblem looks mighty familiar. A good friend of mine is heavily into the Jr's (TBirdbrian) and I believe he's got several thing made by this method. They've withstood the sun and heat wonderfully. MoparBruce
Yes those are my parts! TBirdbrian is one of my customers and a fellow JR collector Have you seen the youtube videos yet? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBu0KgsCpX8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoBPGfUgjow
The Edsel Youngstar was made in North Kansas City, Missouri - had to be. There is no North Kansas City, Kansas. ~Jason
The Jalopy Journal
