Video of Making a Mould

[Gary]

I belong to the Airgun Guild and a fella over there made a mould for his 30 cal air rifle. He shared this video:

 

[Ole_270]

Brings back alot of memories. I never made a mold, but programmed lots of those type machines. Up to and including a slew of 500mm Makino 4 axis Horizontal Milling Centers. It's something to see a 1.25" 2 inseted mill cutter ripping through aircraft aluminum at better than 10k rpm and 250 ipm, 1/4" deep. Chicken feathers flying everywhere.

 

[JWFilips]

Well That sure looks easy enough! NOT!

 

[JWFilips]

Brad ....if you can do this stuff we will place orders!

 

[Brad]

No way. No CNC here.
And making moulds? I have a day job and one job is plenty.

 

[462]

Forever ago, KeithB here/theperfessor there, posted a tutorial of his mould making process, on that other site.

NOE has/had a video, too.

 

[JWFilips]

But Brad just think of all the fun you would have!

 

[Brad]

Or not

 

[Ian]

Its doable on a manual mill but takes forever. You use a boring bar holder and an undersized cherry. Pre-drill the hole, then poke the cherry in there full depth and keep stopping to crank in a thousandth or two of offset in the holder. When you get it the size you want, crank the holder back to zero and pull it back out.

Arcs and orbits are two things that a manual machine can't do well. There are rotary fixtures to add a fourth axis but they require a lot of setup.