1960's Mattel Injector - resin used?

You might try posting at rec.toys.vintage, too....

Also do a Google search of the newsgroups. I just did, and there are some threads from RCM that showed up. One suggestion was milk jug strips, another 35mm film canisters...

Thanks - I'd tried Google Groups but missed those. More creative search strings are in order, it seems.

Mike

...and also sci.polymers.

Erik

[I've got one of those; it's basically a piece of junk. It's supposed to work with regular styrene plastic, the type that airplane models, etc. are made of. Probably the easiest thing would be to recycle some kid's toys for material; just chop them into pieces small enough to fill the melting chamber. But it doesn't work too well; the heater's inefficient and the pressure (from leaning on a lever) insufficient. I couldn't get the (supplied) molds to fill completely; maybe another thermoplastic would have worked better, but I gave up in disgust...]

Andrew Werby

The resin used for the Mattel molder was of course sold by Mattel as a refill and is probably not available. It was a very low melting point material more like wax or sort of in between wax and plastic. An item called "Friendly Plastic" by Amaco® would probably work, as it softens in hot water; quite expensive however. I've seen it and other brands on ebay, so you might do a search. It is also available through some craft suppliers. A low density polyethylene might also work as it molds very easily with minimum heat and pressure. Some jewelry waxes would also work but are not very durable.

Good luck,

My brother had some of this wax/plastic mix when I was a little kid. It was weird enough compared to either wax or plastic that even a 7 year old (me) could figure out it wasn't either but a combo of the two. It was very weak compared to styrene but stronger than wax. ERS

If you don't care about the color you could try hot melt glue. Probably would need to coat the molds with a release to prevent sticking.

Mike