Bring on the CONE

[troylee]

porque?

That was the idea. I need a female mold? Im about to go crazy. I have seen a build or two where people use a plug to wrap acrylic around. Seemed ok. Didnt come out perfect like yours, but heck, they dont have an acrylic fab shop to work out of

Jesse showed pics of his on the first page that he wrapped around a plug mold. Little waves in it, but it should accomplish the goal. Id do a female mold out of roofing flashing but dont have any big enough to do it in one piece. Would be nice to have access a sheetmetal shop as well.

i use a female and a female only..... if you want nice cones you let gravity do the work for ya..."don't fight it". make a reverse mold or female if ya will and heat that bad boy up and she should lay right in there and take her shape.....
here is the monster molds i made.....

 

[Sharpie_]

Why not make your plug the final size that you want your cone to be then make a reverse casting of it, or cover it in talc powder then lay a *random formable sheet material (fiberglass)" layer onto it to make your hollow mold.

 

[eznet2u]

Troylee's method looks cheaper, easier, foolproof, and exact. I doubt it can be improved upon for a DIY cone.

 

[Rhodes19]

i use a female and a female only..... if you want nice cones you let gravity do the work for ya..."don't fight it". make a reverse mold or female if ya will and heat that bad boy up and she should lay right in there and take her shape.....
here is the monster molds i made.....

troylee,

Do you heat the acrylic on top of the mold and let it doop in or do you bake it and then place it on the mold? Thanks.

 

[8mpg]

Thanks Troy!! I will see what I can do about putting a female mold together. I just dont have any single sheets of steel that thin and big. My closest steel yard is 40 miles away and if they dont have any drops, Im stuck with a 4x8.

Maybe I can rig the roofing flashing to be the size I need it.

 

[troylee]

troylee,

Do you heat the acrylic on top of the mold and let it doop in or do you bake it and then place it on the mold? Thanks.

i bake it then then lay it down in the mold very quickly.... you have to have a seam no acrylic will stretch that much..:lol: the acrylic will roll around the inside...

 

[troylee]

Thanks Troy!! I will see what I can do about putting a female mold together. I just dont have any single sheets of steel that thin and big. My closest steel yard is 40 miles away and if they dont have any drops, Im stuck with a 4x8.

Maybe I can rig the roofing flashing to be the size I need it.

roof flashing would work fine.... just pop rivet the seams in it from the inside out and grind the heads as smooth as possible without taking them off...
i used galvinized and spot welded the seam but i know you guys don't have all that equipment....the wood holds the sheet metal mold in a perfect cone so it doesn't get crooked on ya.... if ya dont understand i snap a pic of the top to show ya..... it keeps the upper and lower part of the cone a true circle....

 

[ERICinFL]

Hey Troy, do you happen to have a tutorial thread, or video on YouTube? If not, I'm sure 99% of the DIYers on here would appreciate one. :thumbsup:

 

[jayfl77]

Looking good, cant wait to see how it turns out!

 

[Rhodes19]

i bake it then then lay it down in the mold very quickly.... you have to have a seam no acrylic will stretch that much..:lol: the acrylic will roll around the inside...

Cool beans. Thanks troylee. That makes sense.

 

[bioload]

More than welcome to post pics. I'm really doing a write up because most threads here don't really have a good step by step for a skimmer much less a cone. Lots of after but nothing I have found to hold my hand on building one. So I decided to do one. I think we are taking bit different approach for the cone as well. We will see how mine works out before I post it .

Tim

HTH

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1837546&page=2 Start from post 35

 

[8mpg]

Well, here's an update. After seeing TroyLee's mold and taking his advice, I used this old posterboard mold with a few wood rings for some support. It was plenty to form this 1/8" acrylic. Here are some photos from along the way.

Cut the wood pattern, then double sided taped the wood to the acrylic. Used it to route the pattern Dont have pics of that part, but its just like any other acrylic project.

Took the acrylic and put it on a piece of parchment paper and laid it on the backside of a full sheet pan. Stuck it in the oven at 275*F for 7 minutes. This oven is a commercial oven and when they bake cakes, the cake recipe says 350* but they cook it at 300*. There is a big fan that circulates the heat really well. Id say I was heating at 300* or so

No pics of rolling it, but it was easy, grabbed the 2 sides of the parchment paper, got a roundish shape that would fit into the mold and pushed it in, off the parchment paper

THen I just kept pushing until it lined up. This whole process of putting it into the mold took less than 2 minutes. Lined up the top edge the best I could. You can see the bottom didnt line up perfect. Straight out of the mold:

Edges didnt like up perfectly, so I used a heat gun and some tape to bring the seams together the best I could. Weldon 16 would have been good here, but I only had Weldon 3 laying around. The heat gun really helped bring the uneven seams together.

Kinda final cone. I need to sand the top and bottom of the cone so that it is level.

Seam...note it does have adhesive from the tape still and need to clean it up with some goo gone.

 

[troylee]

Well, here's an update. After seeing TroyLee's mold and taking his advice, I used this old posterboard mold with a few wood rings for some support. It was plenty to form this 1/8" acrylic. Here are some photos from along the way.

Cut the wood pattern, then double sided taped the wood to the acrylic. Used it to route the pattern Dont have pics of that part, but its just like any other acrylic project.

Took the acrylic and put it on a piece of parchment paper and laid it on the backside of a full sheet pan. Stuck it in the oven at 275*F for 7 minutes. This oven is a commercial oven and when they bake cakes, the cake recipe says 350* but they cook it at 300*. There is a big fan that circulates the heat really well. Id say I was heating at 300* or so

No pics of rolling it, but it was easy, grabbed the 2 sides of the parchment paper, got a roundish shape that would fit into the mold and pushed it in, off the parchment paper

THen I just kept pushing until it lined up. This whole process of putting it into the mold took less than 2 minutes. Lined up the top edge the best I could. You can see the bottom didnt line up perfect. Straight out of the mold:

Edges didnt like up perfectly, so I used a heat gun and some tape to bring the seams together the best I could. Weldon 16 would have been good here, but I only had Weldon 3 laying around. The heat gun really helped bring the uneven seams together.

Kinda final cone. I need to sand the top and bottom of the cone so that it is level.

Seam...note it does have adhesive from the tape still and need to clean it up with some goo gone.

amazing aint it!!!!!!!!!:beer:
i have seen way crazy stuff with people trying to make cones... it's very simple...
good job man....:bounce1:

 

[1sirjustis]

Amazing thread!

 

[kcress]

Nice! Now I know how it's done.

I bet if you had a tall enough oven you could place the acrylic-in-the-cone-form into it and in a few minutes it would relax into the form with no distortion or heat gun hassles.

 

[8mpg]

Nice! Now I know how it's done.

I bet if you had a tall enough oven you could place the acrylic-in-the-cone-form into it and in a few minutes it would relax into the form with no distortion or heat gun hassles.

The oven at the bakery was tall enough and I did try that. Just didnt seem to help. My biggest problem was the edges werent perfectly straight. If it was CNC'd or the sides were cut on a table saw, it would have line up perfect. It was my bad template (cut with a jigsaw) that caused the problem.

So just so everyone knows, posterboard can go into the oven without a problem.

 

[8mpg]

Got some circles cut.

Here is kinda how I did it. Made some wood templates then double sided taped it to acrylic and used a flush cut bit with a bearing to duplicate. Not perfect...but hey, its DIY.

Cut a piece of wood just bigger than the circle and drilled a hole in the center

I used a scrap piece of wood with a nail shoved in through the bottom. Clamped it to the router table. Measured from the nail to the edge of the router bit. I needed a 6" circle, so I did the radius of 3" + 1/8" to make up for the nail. I wasnt going to spend $40 on the circle cutter tool. Besides, it cant do little circles that I needed like 3" for a donut at teh bottom of the cup

Then spin the wood on the nail

 

[8mpg]

Got some circles cut.

Here is kinda how I did it. Made some wood templates then double sided taped it to acrylic and used a flush cut bit with a bearing to duplicate. Not perfect...but hey, its DIY.

Cut a piece of wood just bigger than the circle and drilled a hole in the center

I used a scrap piece of wood with a nail shoved in through the bottom. Clamped it to the router table. Measured from the nail to the edge of the router bit. I needed a 6" circle, so I did the radius of 3" + 1/8" to make up for the nail. I wasnt going to spend $40 on the circle cutter tool. Besides, it cant do little circles that I needed like 3" for a donut at teh bottom of the cup

Then spin the wood on the nail

 

[kcress]

Thanks for the clarification details.

You velly clever person.

So what's next up on this build?

 

[8mpg]

Well..Im not going to lie... a board member from here (who is local) is going to help me out and CNC route out the twist lock flange. He offered for me to come check out the setup and I plan on picking his brain about building a CNC. Im really considering building one. Always thought it would be cool to machine wood/plastic/aluminum...

I might try and see if he can cut a new cone on the cnc so everything lines up perfectly. The one I have will work, but its clearly DIY.