printing a mold of an STL file

[Wolfie]

... Who says they intend to make only 1 object ?
In that case a mold is a smart move.

That was never an contention. Obviously if a mold is made, its possible it could be used to produce multiple child castings. My contention was that it was faster to print the object than the mold. Then us a casting material to make a mold from the printed object. There are a myriad of mold materials to choose from (sand, clay, ceramics, resins, etc) and they all have their plusses and minuses as well as optimum use as far as what the casting material will be (melted plastic, metal, resins, etc).

[Roxy]

Also, in the case of a mold, you can use material that is not 3D-Printed. For example, fiberglass. Doing something like that would be much much stronger than 3D-Printed plastic!

[Marm]

Roto-Casting may be the way to go too. It's on my to-build list.

[lycan]

Gday,

I have more than enough materials and experience to make an RTV mold of the printed object, however I am wishing to experiment with a variety of injection materials, so trying to create a stronger mold for trialling purposes as some of the materials I inject have large expansion characteristics during curing.

But I am enjoying all the responses.

Cheers