June 3, 2020

Epic Pud Mold Injection Cap

If you watch any lure making videos on YouTube I’m sure your familiar with the Epic Bait Molds / Marling Baits Epic Pud collaboration.  I’ve been wanting to try a real aluminum mold for awhile so I decided to give the Epic Pud a try.

If you’re not familiar with Epic Bait Molds or Marling Baits (get out from under your rock) the Epic Pud is a 3.5 swimbait.

It is an aluminum open pour type mold.

This is what the Epic Pud looks like after pouring.

To achieve proper layer/color bonding and to avoid cold cracks you need to heat the mold prior to pouring the multi color baits.  This is normally done either with a blow torch or a electric cooking griddle. I just have been putting the mold on my printers heat bed for a bit and it seems to be working fine.

I wanted to try something different so I designed and 3D printed this cap to turn the open pour mold into an injection mold also.

The inside printed a little rough because of the supports but the first single color injection worked great.

I put a piece of rubber on the bottom to try and achieve a smoother top finish but it really didn’t hold up to the temps.

Using this cap safely proved to be a bit of a challenge with the clamps I have.

While this cap will work for single color baits I made it for doing duel injections with the use of a blending block (not shown). The first test bait came out pretty well I think.

After a few test shots I went back and redesign the cap so it doesn’t need all of the clamps.

On the second test bait I turned the cap around so the port was toward the rear of the bait and it came out with a great fade pattern.

I also designed a dual port cap so I can vary the amount of each color I will be injecting.  I still need to print and test this version. I may do a few other versions with the port in different places to to see what kind of looks I can achieve.

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