35 replies to this topic

[pudi.dk]

I'm thinking of compressing. I'd rather use pressure and a bit moisture, rather than alot of moisture and no pressure.

[BrightStar]

Ned Gorski's interesting recent Skylighter newsletter series on 'Nice Shells in 2 1/2 days' contains some star plate tips in part 2. Link here:

http://www.skylighte...es/articles.asp

For most colour comps, I find that a roughly loaded 15mm length easily compacts to 12mm in a star pump, so I imagine some form of pressing would also be useful in a star plate.

[paul]

I´ve begun with my 10mm starplate. Got two pieces of realy sturdy 20mm thick plastic (don´t exactly know what it is, maybe PVC or delrin).
I´ve created a pattern, printed it out and glued it to one plastic-plate. Then I fastened both plates together with 4 M6 bolts, so they won´t
move against each other when drilling. Prior to drilling I´ve punch-marked everything and used a center drill to get everything nice
and smooth...

I then drilled 32 9,5mm holes straight through. I´m getting my stainless steel pins (D: 10mm, L=40mm) this week. The ground plate
will be drilled out to 10...10,1mm, the top plate which will contain the pins will be drilled out to 9,8mm. The pins will be press fitted into
it.

That procedure produced like 10m³ of shavings, my whole workspace was covered it evil, hard to clean up shavings lol



Here´s a not quite HQ pic of the plates:

click me for a picture of that amazing star plate!

P.S: Price comparison: Supreme Pyro´s starplate (don´t know how many holes it has, though): 16,9€ plus shipping from China!!!
My star plate (just 32 holes, but okay!): Totally for free. Just a bit work involved. The plastic was a scrap piece. I´m lucky enough to get the
pins for free. If they hadn´t been for free you would get them for a pack of coffee or a fiver in every metalworking shop.


It´s up to you how much you´ll pay for your hobby! Pay less and do it yourself!!!! (That does not mean you should´nt support pyro suppliers. But
why paying >25€ for something you can make yourself for <10€... If 10€ at all...

Edited by paul, 21 April 2008 - 06:39 AM.

[AdmiralDonSnider]

I want to make my own pumps and try to avoid a trial and error process to figure out the correct dimensions:

So: how far (in mm) does a standard star pump compact the loaded damp composition? I think this value should be the same for all sizes of pumps and is the distance from the upper notch to the maximum compaction point. Want to start with an 8mm pump.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot

[AdmiralDonSnider]

I want to make my own pumps and try to avoid a trial and error process to figure out the correct dimensions:

So: how far (in mm) does a standard star pump compact the loaded damp composition? I think this value should be the same for all sizes of pumps and is the distance from the upper notch to the maximum compaction point. Want to start with an 8mm pump.

Any ideas? Thanks a lot !

[paul]

I´ve gotten my 25mm comet pump today. Works as expected nut unfortunately it´s got a smal bevel on the plunger and the inside
of the tube. After all thats not too bad, the comets all come out very nice and clean and are exactly the same size.
I´ll post a pic of 30 D1 glitter comets I´ve prepared from a 500g batch tomorrow.

Heres the link to my comet pump on pyrobin.com and here
you can see a bunch of the D1 comets.

Edited by paul, 17 May 2008 - 01:01 PM.