grind off mold top

[686]

there is some one on here that fixes lee 6 cav molds. who is it? i have the lee 90353 190 gr swc that needs some work. can that person contact me. thanks charles

[cheese1566]

Not me, but...

I had one done at my local machine shop. It cost $14 (plus they gave me some alum plate for luber bases) to have the top resurfaced flat and smooth.

[686]

i have the lee 90353 190 gr fb .452 mold the bottom band is .066 thick , i may need 1/2 of it taken off. would this to much to take off?

[leftiye]

Can probly be done with a file, and a piece of wet or dry paper on a glass sheet. We're talking dings and burrs, and flattening - though a person who was good with a file could square the surface too. But that probly doesn't need to be done. If you want to reduce the thickness of your bottom band a milling machine is the only way to go. BTW, .066 is THIN ENOUGH!

[jimkim]

Try Erik at http://www.hollowpointmold.com/. He charges $15.00 to mill a mould.

[686]

there was some one that milled down the top and put in a longer spur plate bolt with a sleave around it, in side the spru plate. is that person on here?

[Red River Rick]

686:

Get a hold of Buckshot, he'll do a proper job for you. If you need approx 0.030" taken off the top, machining it in the mill is your best bet, not playing with files and emery................and Buckshot will do a excellent job!

Or, check the Vendor Sponsors section. NOE may be able to help as well.

RRR

[44man]

I have to hand it to guys like Buckshot.
I wanted to mill the top of a Lee mold but I could not find a 90* angle on any side or bottom to index with. There was no way I could make sure I was milling so the top was at 90* to the cavities so the bases would be straight.
This was a used mold my friend bought with the top in such poor shape an indicator just bounced around. Why guys cut molten sprues and gall the tops is beyond me.
A file and fine sandpaper got it back to work. I hate the dead soft Lee aluminum.
Before the first cast, the bottom of the sprue plate MUST be smoothed and de-burred, corners rounded and polished, etc. That means cranking out the self threading screw, replacing it after drilling, threading the hole again and installing a set screw.

[44man]

How does Lee cut a mold with no square surfaces?
I make my blocks as close to 90* as I can get them. When in the vise I take a final skim cut across the top with an end mill BEFORE I cherry and never remove the blocks until done. Removing burrs is done by opening the vise and using fine emery taped on a flat stick. Gently does it.
End mill marks on the hard aluminum mold tops and the bottom of the sprue plate makes a VERY slick surface that holds Bullplate great and also allows super venting. I do not like a polished surface.

[felix]

Does Lee cut molds? I thought they extruded block halves. Reason? Upside: Speed. Downside: soft metal. ... felix

[theperfessor]

Felix -
The mold halves are extruded, but they mill the inner faces and the top. The extruded outer surfaces aren't square or flat, which you can get away with if you mill top and cut cavities in same setup. This cuts out a lot of extra steps, but44Man is right, the end result does not give you very accurate outer surfaces to work from when altering/modifying mold.

[44man]

Does Lee cut molds? I thought they extruded block halves. Reason? Upside: Speed. Downside: soft metal. ... felix
The cavities are lathe turned but they still need indexed to the tops and center line of the blocks.
I do not think they mill the inner faces other then the scratches for venting. The inside is squeezed to shape but they might need cleaned up. I would like to see the process.
You would think every mold would be a precise size unless they have some monkey programing the CNC machine.

[theperfessor]

44Man-
I thought Lee got away from using carbide plug to form cavity to final size and went exclusively to lathe boring. Don't know for sure how they make them but there are a lot of lathes with live tooling available that can mill some features and turn/bore also. This lets you mill top and bore cavities in one setup. Having accurate outside surfaces is not necessary since all work done in one setup.

Machines like this are expensive and take a while to learn to use properly, which might explain why their quality suffers from time to time and why they won't make major investment to keep up with backlog of orders.

[BABore]

You clamp together two nice squared up blocks, and then drill or plunge an end mill down the centerline of them, you won't have any burrs when you take them apart. Ever wonder how Lee manages to get all of them burrs. Not so square extrusions that have varying dimensions so they rattle around in their fixture.

I recently opened up the GC shanks of three, new Lee molds for a couple fellows here. I indicated in each cavity first and recorded the x and y. After the boring bar was set for the first cavity, and checked, I could go to each of my recorded centers and just plunge them in. There was no commonality between the molds. The distance from a common end, to the first cavity, varied as much as 0.040". Distance between cavities was +/- 0.065". Cavities varied above and below the parting line by +/- 0.001 with no pattern that would suggest they were tipped one way or another. Just plain random. I haven't personally ran a CNC machine before, but I know they are very accurate. Some of the variance I saw could be explained away by sloppy tooling and unsquare blocks, some could not.

[theperfessor]

The operations Lee cuts out when making a mold are the reason why Lee molds are $40 for a 6 cav when other makers charge over a $100 for a 3 or 4 cav. How difficult it is to modify mold after sale is not really their problem, is it? After all, they do offer a free replacement policy, don't they?

People gotta understand that a Lee mold is a Volkswagen, not a Ferrari. I don't like dealing with their delays on Group Buys, and I hear their quality control could be improved, but as long as people buy their stuff at $40 instead of from another maker for $100+ Lee will have plenty of business.

Sorry to hijack thread a little.