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An interior sleeve plugged with a hole in the center. A piston?
Could the lid from a kettle grill work? Patio umbrella or stanchion base?
I will look into that, trying to keep the weight below 1#
Just for the sake of discussion. Yes attaching the rim is part of my challenge but not in this thread. I don’t know much about plastics and am looking for things for products I can mold with. I am already exploring different options, and I am still open to suggestions, but this thread was about strong moldable products I can use at home.
I am thinking my easiest doable option might be to take a section of abs or pvc pipe and flatten it out with heat and then use a wooden die to press it into a simple wooden mold. It doesn’t take all that much heat to make them very pliable.
I ran Truck repair shops throughout my adult life and I am a stickler about identifying the complaint rather than focusing on what a customer might think a solution is.
Hooray for that! That plays nicely into your hobbies as an inventor.
I can’t say I’m up to date on all the options but I’d suggest 2 part hardening resins are your best bet. They can be strengthened with embedded fibers and only need to be poured into a mold at room temperature. They can be heat cured after setting for additional strength. Mixtures can be adjusted for different properties of hardness and ductility.
There is a product called smooth on epoxy which is great for molding parts but it is also expensive. In the final stages of prototyping it would be fine. The end product will be done by injection molding I believe and I would like my final product to pretty much mirror what the production model will look like. But in the meantime while I am still making changes and experimenting I am hoping to find less expensive options. I do like the 2 part resins because I can join, wood metal and fiberglass. I read up a little on 3 d printing and was pleased to find it is cheaper than I expected and might be my best option right now.
No expertise on 3D printing, but my experiences with printed parts and what I hear from others makes me concerned about the strength of large parts. I assume with enough of the right materials those issues can be resolved. So far I’ve found that printed couplers for machines that need to break under stress do so without a problem.
Glad you said that. I am very skeptical about the structural integrity of printed parts.