Molding Intricate Parts

Art & Sculpture

My name is Eric Strebel, I am an Industrial Designer and run Botzen Design Inc., a product design and development company focusing on handheld and table top consumer products. I design products for global partners from initial concept to mass production, including hand drawn ideation concept sketches, mock-ups, prototypes, as well as CAD and pre production samples. I bring dreams to life and I also document and preserve my craft & process on my Design and Making YouTube channel .

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October 26th, 2021October 27th, 2021

This week’s video is about molding an intricate handle part. It has lots of screw bosses, undercuts and details that are not found in most plastic parts. This makes it particularly difficult to duplicate.

For this casting I use some clay to dam up the ends of the part, then I use two different durometers of silicone to make the two halves of the silicone mold. There are 20 vent tubes and one pour tube in this part alone!

I also make a special tool out of a pair of pliers. The new pliers have a concave tip on the end of them so that I can grab the vent tubes and remove them from the finish molded part, before I take them out of the silicone.

Enjoy the video.