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Bio-Balls


Faran

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Afrikan nailed it - freshwater sumps. Figured Marine keepers would know where to go to get stuff like this better than any of the LFSes as none deal with anything saltie around here. Have queried with a few injection molding people around here and will get some quotes within a few days. Overseas manufacturers have heaps for cheap, but shipping would require "surface" and boats will take 4-6 weeks for delivery...

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Simple answer here... set up your own mini moulding unit.

Many...no... many many years ago in my days of model railway building.. I used to convert a lot of three rail stock to two rail for quite a number of the club members.

We were always short of carriage wheels.. and the new stock had pin point axels.. which for our meager funds were a costly comodity.. so we designed an injection moulder that used surplus old plastic and the steel axels were turned on a mini lathe.

From here we went on to make all manner of plastic bits for the hobby.. including ... well... thats another story :)

It was basically a large soldering iron mounted to the side of a ram.

The iron was several hundred watts if I remember right.. and the copper head was shaped to go around the ram.. but these days.. any good heating element would do.

Bits of (in our case).. black hard plastic were chopped up and put into the top of the ram, then the piston was pushed in on top of the plastic chips.

Once the plastic had melted.. the ram (piston) was forced down with a simple lever system, and the molten plastic was extruded into a mould (mold).. which in our situation was multi spoked wheels... so a simple ball mold would be easy.

I'm planning on making a similar setup now.. but in this case for stock car wheels.. (Slots).. grankids and grandpa... he he... but time is the prob at the mo.

Just a thought... but if you want thousands.. then the world is full of redundant plastic he he.

I can draw it up if you want details.

I've aso made a few Vacuum Forming units.. so a two half ball might work :)

Bill.

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