I sold my first injection molds made on a tiny Taig CNC milling machine. Compared to a half million dollar Haas mold maker it too was a POS.
In the spirit of paying it forward I am working on a video series making "useful" molds on a PIECE Of Shi.. Er Sweet Potato Mini Manual Milling Machine. Most of these "molds" will not be commercial resale grade, but if anybody wants to buy one... The goal is to give people who couldn't afford anything better than a Seig X2 in one of its many variations or variations on paint scheme to do something fun and possibly useful.
I have no use for it. I already have a South Bend Knee Mill that is very nice for my manual milling needs. At first I thought about using that for the project. That would be cheating. Its as much better than an X2 clone as a half million dollar Haas mold cutter is to a Taig. It would be perceived as disingenuous to use a $24000 machine to demonstrate what you "can do" on a $1000 machine. It would be perceived that way because it would be true. It would be blatantly dishonest to say "because I can do it on a 2 ton 5 HP knee mill with DROs and power feeds that you can do it on a 130 lb .3 horsepower Piece of Shi... Err Sweet Potato."
In spite of my belief in spending money to make money and spending money to save time because time is money... I am still inherently frugal. Finally I decided to my integrity was worth than that. I bought one. There are cheaper mills, but they are so small ass to not be practical for this experiment. I did buy the absolute cheapest one I could find. It was not the one from Harbor Freight. Harbor Freight had the cheapest sticker price I could find, but it was online only. After tax and shipping it was about 6 dollars more expensive than the one I bought.
The first video will be an introduction covering this and maybe with a fast motion overview of the first mold. It will be a concept introduction video.
Before Episode One which will probably be about making a lead casting mold of some kind there will be some beginner videos.
A. Machine over view and deficiencies. B. Work holding and Work Holding on a budget. C Tool Selection and tool holding with a focus on the initial project videos. D. Minimum tooling and best cost benefit for part location, and machine tram and alignment.
That may be put into just two videos and anybody who already knows how they will do those things will be encouraged to skip them and wait for Episode One.