Re Small garage factory. Pics

A friend sent me pictures of his garage factory. He is an engineer in South Africa.

He stayed at my place for a few months, stranded here during lockdown. After he returned to South Africa, he was attacked by some Black individuals in his home. After he recovered from his injuries, he moved a long way out into the bush, to the middle of a game reserve. His new security team consists of warthogs, the occasional lion, and Cape buffalo.

Picture an area resembling Southwest Texas, complete with those animals, and an American ranch-style home.

He has several small molding machines that he built in his garage. They produce parts for an auto-parts company. He works from home and uses recycled plastic. He even machines his own molds on a machine built with electronics I gave him before he returned home.

The first machine is a hydraulic piston-powered type. It uses two hydraulic cylinders and an inexpensive microcontroller to automate the process. The left side has a heated syringe/plunger that injects plastic into the mold. The right side has a piston that opens and closes the mold. The mold opens, and as it moves backward it actuates spring-loaded pins that eject the part; it then closes and the cycle repeats.

The other machines function similarly.  One uses pneumatic pistons to open and close the mold directly, the third machine uses pneumatic piston but because it needs a higher clamp pressure, it uses a knuckle to open and close the mold.  

While I could build this myself, at this time it is cheaper to buy one rather than screwing around building.  

I is totally possible to do something like this working from home.

Knuckle closing system.

Small garage level factory

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2M9_81FgY8

3k usd and not from Chickety China Land.  

I guy could set a couple of these up in his spare bedroom and crank out roughly 3.3 pounds of parts per hour per machine.  

One could pretty easily make a commercial SRTA round with this.  Bonus points, sell it with the sprue and runner attached so there is less labor.  

All sorts of auto parts, hardware etc too.  

It draws low power.  You could even set it up in a garden shed.  

Years ago, I did a pickup in Long Island suburbia with my big semi truck to a guys house where he was cranking out ice scrapers from a old ebay injection molder in his house garage.  I took bout a half semi load of those things on something like a 9 or 10 stop run all the way to Detroit.  Customers were these little dollar store type places.

Molds are not too hard to do if you know the design methods and can order the molds from shapeways, or a local machine shop can turn a mold on the lathe.  

The best mold for something like this would be aluminum bronze.  It has better heat dispersion than stainless, longer life than brass.  Brass can give you more parts per min, but wears faster.  Stainless is the most durable, but unless you add in some sort of active cooling, it will be slower.

Remember this guy?

 

He converted to Islam in Saudi and went on Haaj with the Saudi intel service guys....

Pray for this madness to end

 

They are discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings.

Yes you read that correctly. It’s real. I’m not speculating, I know.

And it’s pure evil.

The last time a nuclear weapon was used was August 6th and 9th of 1945 on two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and…

— Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@FmrRepMTG) August 16, 2026

Ooof the rain wont stop

 Rainy season is very much at hand.

This month there waa a few bours of sun, but then back to clouds and rain.

After the constant heavy rainfall alerts on the 10th, it has not abated, people are adapting. School back in session, and traffic is back.

Business is slow.  Lots of inquiries, few sales. 

I need to really push sales today. However the social media girl lives in a place that has the road cut off due to floods, and her home has terrible internet, so I am not holding my breath.

Topping it out, the business manager got his wallet, money etc stolen from his dining room table.  So now he will be late.  Which means he cant clear the inbox and follow-up too.

I am estimating 3-4 workers late or absent today.

I will be hiding in my office today. AC on and prepping some CAD files for laser.  The Russian engineer last year did a set of blueprints for a extrusion machine using angle bar.  

It took us a month to build it.  

However now that all the dimensions are more or less proper, i can convert it to flat 3mm plate parts with tabs to align everything. 

This will turn that job into a day of fabrication.  Kinda.  That is first attempt assembly and no practice.

The 10hp plastic shredder with practice takes less than 2 hours to assemble the frame.  3 days for everything including epoxy paint. Based in those numbers i can expect 2 weeks for thevextrusion machine assuming all materials on hand.

----update----
3 absent, everyone else late except me and one of the girls.  Starlink been cutting out a bit since noon when the rain really started falling.