May 10, 2022

The Slug Bug

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

This is another weird small creature type bait that I am working on.  It’s just something I sculpted up in Fusion 360 out of boredom on my lunch break one day.

Here is what the original design looks looked like.

It was designed to be an open pour mold for a quick simple bait to pour although I was concerned it might be a little difficult to remove with all of the under cuts in the mold design and such a small top opening.

The mold printed pretty well and relativity fast in about 5-6 hours for this simple single cavity at .10 layer heights.

Unfortunately the first pour with some remelted craw tube blend plastisol didn’t turn out so well as none of the tips filled in.

For the second try I used some worm blend and poured a little hotter but the results were not much better.

As a test I drilled some bottom venting holes into the mold were the tips would be (on just one side) to see if this would help.

As you can see from the left side of the bait this did seem to improve the result a little bit compared to the right side with no venting.

I changed the design a little bit… I rounded off the tips of the tail just a little bit, thinned out the in between bits of the tail sections, and enlarged the nubs on the head.

I also added a bunch of venting to all of the tips and nubs.  (Who would have thunk an open pour mold would need venting?)

I chamfered all of the exits of the venting ports on the bottom of the mold to make it easier to unclog them if necessary.

The venting holes may have been a little big as the plastisol did find its way into them but it’s not to big of a deal.

Here the the bait straight out of the mold. It was a little challenging to remove with such a small top opening but not as hard as I though it might be. Although this will be more of one of my a specialty baits and not something I would intend to make a ton of at one time…. multi cavity molds should be possible.

After cleaning up the venting nubs the finished bait came out pretty well. I left the front two nubs on so it looked like slug antennas but I want to make these bigger in the final design anyway.

This is what it will looked like rigged up.  The larger exposed hook should allow for some easy hook ups but I’ll find out once I get out and test it. Overall I really like how this cam out and it should have some good floppy tail action (I hope).

I changed a few things on the design… bigger front antennas, made the vents smaller, and the top opening a little bit larger.

Here is the first test pour just using some remelt. The smaller vents worked a lot better at reducing the nubs on all of the appendages although they are still there a little bit.

I little side profile to show the larger front antennas.

Once I was a satisfied with the overall design I printed up a 3 cavity mold.  I used cheap filament so it didn’t print as well and I had to drill out all the venting but it should still work.

Again just using remelt the first batch came out pretty well with just a few bubbles in the center of the tails.

Next it was on to some dual color baits… I really like how these came out too.

I’m still figuring out the mold but so far they look great.

Same color family with just a bit darker purple. As a test I used craw blend for the heads and worm blend plastisol for the tail.  Maybe this will make them a little more durable for the jig head while still allowing a lot of tail action.

This should be enough for testing… for now.

I did some straight up pink too… I usually have good luck with this color no matter what.

 

On the board with the first fish.

Not very big but I’ll take it.

The days color of choice.

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Single Process

.15 Layer height

10 Top Layers

3 Bottom Layers

5 Shells

Print Time (single) 3:50

Print Time (3 cavity) 8:15

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