Melting & Pouring recycled PET/HDPE for artistic use 1

[Jeff616]

I have a small design firm in L.A. and I'm interested in working in recycled pellets/flake, melting and pouring into flexible silicon molds. Injection molding won't work due to many undercuts and lack of "uniqueness" in the product. Does anyone know about melt/flow temps and how I would actually go from pellet to pouring? Color options are important as well. This is small volume, specialized product market. I could use off-the-shelf casting resins, but am trying to stick to a recycled product as well.

Stumped in L.A.

 

[insideman]

Recycled materials you cited don't "pour". Very viscous when molten!

 

[chaving]

You will find that you can heat and melt the plastics you mentioned but when you pour them they will chill and stop flowing very quickly leaving you with piles of plastic that resemble cow pats.
Getting plastic to flow without pressure is very difficult, the viscosity must be very low for the material to fill a form.
Normally after fowing you will have a great deal of shrinkage too meaning the surfave finish is very poor.

 

[ADDEELL]

i have an idea that your melt can be pumped(heated jacketed gear pump)continously.
in case material is allowed to stay inside it will definitely affect the color.

 

how can you controll the temp in a small scale operation. i too am interested in doing backyard small runn production of say 200-10,000 pieces. also how will silicon rubber mold hold up under these high temps? i have heard from other artists that tried this claim that the liquid plastic burnt and smelled bad.