You've seen us use the dispensing bottle in previous videos and how we've made the molds and now I'm going to show you how the production equipment works.  This is the Spitfire injector.  It runs only on air.  There's no heat involved because again our material the photopolymer is a liquid and remains liquid.  So this is completely pneumatic runs by air logic.  This is the larger curing unit called the silver bullet.  Now with the silver bullet I can make the molds in this chamber or I can make the patterns in this chamber.  What I'm going to do is show you how this is injected how the molds are injected then we're going to show you how we're curing and what the capabilities of the silver bullet are.

Alright I'd like to explain how the Spitfire injector works for the HD polymers.  This is an air only operated machine.  It's actually powered by compressed air or inert gas can be used. In this case I've got this hookup daisy chained to the silver bullet.  There's an auxiliary air out on the back of the Silver Bullet unit.  It's coming into a regulator that's easy to adjust at the back of the unit and I'm generally going to want to run this at about 40 PSI for all the functions of the machine.  Now again air only, no electricity at all.  We've got individual control valves for various functions.  This is the nozzle valve.  This will control the foot pedal and its ability to work.  This is the injection pressure.  This is the pressure of the material coming out of the reservoir tank and that's generally around 10 PSI. Again we're liquid we don't have to be in a hurry when we fill.  This is the reservoir tank valve.  This means that when this is closed down there is no pressure going to the resin at all.  When it's pulled back out again the tank is pressurized and this is the pressure which we will be injecting.  There's another valve on the machine and that is our auxiliary air valve.  In the daisy chain operation the port normally used for the blowgun is been substituted that port from the Silver Bullet is feeding this machine with pressure right now but we use the auxiliary air valve port with a blowgun to clean off the faces of the mold before we load them and then start to inject.  This is the foot valve.  It turns on the dispensing valve that's inside the unit and that's what we're using to fill our molds with.  Once depressed the HD polymer will come out of the injector nozzle and into our frames.  We tap this and it continues to dispense.  

Alright once our mold has been made we're going to utilize the hinge as a venting mechanism just as if we were going to shoot wax.   I've made some small cuts from the cavity to the hinge bar which is now going to act like a manifold.  The one thing about clear silicone is it's a little difficult to vent and I don't want to have to powder the lines in order to get the air to vent out of this mold.  Now different than wax injection usually wax injection we're having to clamp very very rigidly because the pressure that the molten wax has to come out of the injector.  Again this is a thin photopolymer.  It's about the viscosity of olive oil.  The reserve tank holds a bottle like this.  I've got air pressure going into that tank.  I control the valve the line coming out of that tank via valve and a foot pedal to the dispensing nozzle.  You might notice that this is exactly the same shape as the sprue former was in the micro frame and so the two are going to match perfectly.  So I'm holding simply holding the nozzle the mold up to the nozzle.  I don't have to jam it it's just very light pressure I want to seal it and then I'm going to with my foot kick the pedal.  Now you can see I've got time to work I've got time to allow for the pressure to build up behind this and force the air out of the cavity.  

So now I filled the cavity but again I'm not worried about getting rid of all the air bubbles.  You've seen in the previous video that we're using pressure to get rid of those air bubbles so I'm just going to start loading the silver bullet for curing.  Now to talk a little bit about the capacity of the silver bullet it can operate on two levels and can take 13 of these molds per level.  So I would start from the back continue to move forward if I went to the second level I'd continue to add molds on top dropping the tray down.  Now something to point out about the silver bullet right now is it was designed to take larger molds as well.  It was designed to take bangle bracelet molds as the bangle you've seen in still photos and in the molds we've made.  This happens to be a mold of a snake you can see the scales here.  Again that was produced in the Silver Bullet.  Both the mold and the cured pattern produced in the silver bullet.  Silver Bullet can also accommodate multi cavity molds.   You've seen us use the white mastering material.  So that white mastering material came out of a single mold it was an exact clone of the original RP piece.   I've made a five cavity mold because I need to make several hundred of these small pins for production.   I'll use this mold if I make three of these molds I'm actually turning out 15 pieces on one level.  I can double the height of the interior of the silver bullet and get six of these molds in at a time and I'm turning 30 patterns over in less than ten minutes.  

Okay we've completed the injection on few molds and now we're going to run the silver bullet for the curing cycle and again this is a hyperbaric chamber just like the smaller Firefly unit that you saw.  It's going to first alternate.  It's going to put pressure then it's going to turn the lights on behind it and unlike the Firefly unit this is completely automatic.  So I'll close the door of the unit and when you tighten it it's just like changing a tire on a car you alternate.  Okay so I'm set up now for three minutes of pressure time.  That's going to crush and reduce all the air bubbles.  This is a higher pressure operating at roughly twice the pressure of the Firefly unit.  So it's a little bit more efficient about the speed at which it crushes and dissolves the bubbles.   I've got two minutes and 45 seconds of curing time which would be adequate for what we're trying to do on these size parts and I'm going to start.  Now it's automatically filling the tank with air pressure and it's going to hold it for the three minutes that we put in of pressure time and then it's going to automatically turn the lights on while again while it's still under pressure and it's going to cure for two minutes and 45 seconds under light so under six minutes for the complete cycle.  We could have had 26 molds in there at a time or we could have run six of our multi cavity molds inside the unit.  

Now we're just a couple of seconds away for the lights coming on and for those of you using the machine it's going to be very easy to know that your lights are on because you're going to see the lights turning on and they'll shine through the gasket and you'll be able to see that we're starting the curing process.  Now in normal production I wouldn't be waiting for the machine to cure I'd be filling other molds so at the end of a cycle I'm ready to refill and put more molds in.   I've just heard the machine automatically turn off.  It's now going to drain the air out of the tank and as soon as the air is all out of the tank I'm going to open the door remove the parts and again if I'd have been in a production situation I would be filling more parts or loading the machine with more filled molds to continue the production process.  

Alright the air is completely out of the unit now takes about 30 seconds to drain the tank 30 to 45 seconds.  And the screen is flashing letting me know the cycle has been completed.  It will remain that way until I acknowledge by pressing the ok button.  Just lets me know that I've acknowledged that the cycle is over.   Now I'm going to open and remove the molds that we put in and they'll be completely cured and bubble free.

Alright so now I've taken the glass plates off of the patterns that have been cured inside the mold of these molds and now I'm going to open up and remove the parts.  This is our Revo coin.  You may remember made from a wax model.  This is a 0.2 millimeter leaf.  Now again I'm not worried about bending this at all when I take it out because it's going to go right back into the shape it was cured in.  Got this little earring.   This is for 2.2 millimeter stones.  You may remember of seeing the CAD/CAM model and again it's going to be perfect weight, perfect detail.  So here you have it again that's our pattern and that is our casting from the pattern.