November 5, 2021

Bellows Gill

STL’s for this lure are available for purchase from Cults3d.com

This is a pretty unique soft lure called a Bellows Gill. I recently saw these online and wanted to try them so I decide to try and replicate them. I guess they are suppose to look like a Bluegill or other bait fish and the ribbing helps give the bait a natural feel when bit.  It’s definitely a cool feeling bait in the hand.

The design was pretty simple to replicate in Fusion 360… here is what I started with…

… and this is what it looks like in the form of a single cavity test mold.

The first printed mold ready to test.

The first try injected really well and the finished bait measures about 3″ in length.

Unfortunately the no name PLA I printed the mold with did not hold up so well and the ribbing deformed from the heat of the plastisol. (I am still able to inject it like this though.)

I then tried to print a mold in ABS (first time I tried this) but I haven’t printed in ABS in so long my settings kind of sucked as you can see.

Even with the poor print settings and the ribs not being fully formed they worked well and didn’t deform but the bait really didn’t release from the mold well enough and I tore it up.  (I put a crap load of worm oil on it too.) I may revisit the ABS mold in the future but for now I’m going to try one other thing first…

I went back into CAD and made the spaces between the ribs a little bigger. I did end up with a few less ribs but I think with the thicker ribs on the actual mold PLA might work. Back to the printer….

The printed new version… still needs some tweaks to fix the gaps in the ribs.

It injected great will very little flashing. I even did it as a dual laminate.

Even with less ribs it looks ok I think.

The side view of the laminate (looks better in person).

Here is Version 1 (top)  compared to Version 2 (bottom). I still like the top one better so maybe I’ll try that mold again in my normal PLA I use and see if that works better.

Really loving these laminates injected this way.

This was a happy little accident but it came out pretty cool.

4/30/23 – I am also going to be trying a silicone version of this mold so I designed a master mold box to try that next.

Just a quick simulated version of what the silicone mold should look like once poured.

I printed up the mold box but I have my doubts whether it’s going to work or not. Those ribs are awful close together we’ll have to see if the silicone will release from something that tight. I probably should have used the thicker rib version for this.

5/26/23 – This was just a quick test pour using some 9 year old Smooth-Sil 945 that I found under my bench and which I can’t believe was still good.  Everything looks like it came out pretty well so I just have to get some more silicone before I can pour the other half to test if it will inject.

To be continued after testing…

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