other moulds for melting

What else other than metal can be used as a mold to melt HDPE plastic in an oven?
Has anyone had any success with other materials ?
We have used soft drink cans but get a lot of sticking ( these plugs would be great for lathe work - if we had a lathe)

Have you tried silicone molds? I haven't used them personally but they are widely used in many industries.

benbattengineer wrote:Have you tried silicone molds? I haven't used them personally but they are widely used in many industries.

Ben do you have an idea what type of silicone that we could use ? Is here aa formula that we could use to be able to mould some of the hand parts / ideas we have for stem projects . I will include some pics tomorrow

There is a hobbyist silicone called Sorta Clear which is designed to mould plastics/resins/etc. It’s somewhat cheap, pretty easy to work with and captures quite a bit of detail.

I have some experience using it at work but have not personally used it to mould plastics. If you’re interested, I can make a small mould with it and we can test how well it works with HDPE.

I have also used teflon to mould silicone parts at work. That could possibly work as well. However that needs to be machined so takes a bit more time.

We have been using these in the oven with good results

We are having issues with the base tape , as the glue gets too hot and stops sticking .