MakerGear Forum

With Jimc's help I've made close to 30 prototype lure to fish for Salmon in Lk. MI.
Had to coat the plugs with glaze to prevent leaks:
If purchased retail? ....the above lures would be over $300 bucks and be made in China.
All lures were made with PET+ for durability when fishing at and deeper down than 100'
where water pressure is extreme.

This is very cool.

thats great john. nice to see them all done and finished off.

Have a drop knife vinyl letter sign cutter and was able to make the die cuts for the inserts.
Basic air brushing on the noses and it's a far better finished product than it's Chinese counterpart.

When time allows, these lure files will be added to my Thingiverse account.

While I have no interest in selling these plugs commercially, I hope it will wakes up the fishing world
on what can be done with a 3D printer when used for home manufacturing.

If you can think it, you can make it. We're only limited by the size of the object.

Having parts you can use in the 'reel" world is stone, flat-out wonderful!

Had some pro SLAs made to compare against the M2 printed parts. 2 pro SLAs were $140.
M2 prototypes? ...under a buck apiece. I know now, pro SLAs are un-needed.

SLAs did have a more finished production part look without the print lines, but at $70 a copy, they should have.

When legal patent issues are taken care of ...I'll show off the parts I have made with master-designer and mind reader, jimc.
He''s been helping me develop tackle going back to May of this year.

Started on this long journey back in April when I hit the hip for the M2 and have zero regrets.
Filament drive? ...this is a weak link, having an optional all metal machined single extruder drive would make
M2 head and shoulders above the rest.

Never would have got to this point where I'm having 2 injection molding tools being made
from M2 prototypes without the support from the members here!

Have you looked into resin casting at all? I've been interested in it for a while, and maybe will start playing with it this winter. Your lures look like they would be a good candidate for printed two-part negative molds.

i have done a bit of it over the years. i have a vacuum chamber to degas casting resins. not to answer for john but i think he needs quite a bit more volume of parts jin. thousands i believe.

I have to make parts in the 1000s out of polycarb.
Injection molding? ...while the tooling is expensive, the parts are not.

Goal with the M2 was to make test parts, test geometry as effected by water flow.
Made over 8 versions in 2 kinds of prototypes, with an off-shot 3rd prototype that
ended up being version 5, of product 3.

Made well over 200 test parts, some ABS, most were PET+.
There is no other financial alternative that compares with the M2 spitting out
low cost test pieces on demand for in-the-water testing.

Mission accomplished. Now on to other design products once version 5 is in
full production towards the end of this December. Takes a long time
to make a mold in a CNC machine where cooling water passages have
to be engineered.
First tool I had made in 2004