Does Magma sell mold parts?

[ballisti-cast]

I get mine laser cut and surface grind them. A water machine would do it though too and surface grinding is probably unnecessary, but I can't afford to have one that's bad so I do it more as a precaution.

[GabbyM]

Four hole manifold sounds like it would work as long as spout freeze didn’t rear it's ugly head.

For a sprue plate. I think you’d need to use two separate plates. With the plate in back having a longer arm to hit a pin the front plates arm would pass by. Then time them so they didn’t hit at the same time to reduce impact trauma.

In the long run I don't see four cavity machine molds as very practical.

[6bg6ga]

I get mine laser cut and surface grind them. A water machine would do it though too and surface grinding is probably unnecessary, but I can't afford to have one that's bad so I do it more as a precaution.

Have you considered farming out the part?

[ballisti-cast]

Four hole manifold sounds like it would work as long as spout freeze didn’t rear it's ugly head.

For a sprue plate. I think you’d need to use two separate plates. With the plate in back having a longer arm to hit a pin the front plates arm would pass by. Then time them so they didn’t hit at the same time to reduce impact trauma.

In the long run I don't see four cavity machine molds as very practical.

You need cartridge heaters in the spout. 2 100 watt ones would do the job. they can be picked up on ebay for $10 each.

[257]

there is a local job shop here that does water jet he cut some holes thru 4140 heat treated and stress releived about 3.500 inchs thick with no problem at all

[RoGrrr]

I don't think a hardened sprue plate would be necessary as they have a long life without being hardened. SNIP

BALLISTI-CAST
From what I saw, the ear on the sprue plate which MIGHT need some heat treat is the ear which hits the pin to open/cut the sprues.
While I don't have my BULLET MASTER running yet (I bought it as a basket case and need to do much work on it to make it functional), of the moulds which I have, several of them exhibit a fair amount of wear on that ear, leaving me to think that a new plate made of CRS, and case hardening that particular ear will solve that problem.
However, since my BM is a Mark II, built in the 70's (according to MAGMA) I'm not sure how many MILLIONS of boolits these dies have spawned.
So maybe heat treat isn't necessary.

[6bg6ga]

Your Bullet Master probably has hundreds of thousands of cycles on it and that is bound to cause some wear. I think that I see where ballisti-cast is coming from and that possibly might be that heat treating may cause some plate distortion which will lead to the sprue plate not contacting the top of the mold correctly. I don't see that spot hardening would be the answer to the problem. I could show you some wear on my 4 cavity mold due to hitting them with an object to open them up. Yet they still function correctly after having made a 100K rounds or better over the years.

[ballisti-cast]

If you heat treat it you have to surface grind it because there are small unpredictable dimensional changes that occur.

[GabbyM]

Don't have any appreciable wear on any of my molds sprue plates. Have some here I purchases used from a commercial caster that show lots of wear on the molds but the plates are fine. They are Magma molds from when they converted Saeco molds to fit there machines. Hard telling how many miles they have on them. I’ve never had to replace a damaged sprue plate. But you easily could as they are not a high cost item. Heat treat and surface grind them and they’d be a higher cost item.

In my experience the machines are easier on molds than hand casting.

[RoGrrr]

If you heat treat it you have to surface grind it because there are small unpredictable dimensional changes that occur.

What I was thinking was to simply cherry red heat the one ear and quench it to case harden. The distortion you talk about should be minimal since the main part of the late won't have that much heat applied to it.

[6bg6ga]

It will still distort resulting in another operation being needed.
Any distortion at all requires the plate to be surface ground to maintain its flatness. I realize that this might be a concept that is hard to understand until you have had the experience of doing it. The plate in fact even thou heated on the ends in an attempt to case harden the heat in the plate still travels all thru the plate resulting in distortion enough in fact that it won't function correctly unless it is surface ground after the fact. Having run surface grinders re-surfacing tooling and such along with assorted parts I can attest that the most minor imperfection is the one that causes the problem. Ever wonder why coolant plays an important part in the surfacing grinding operation? In order to grind an object and maintain flatness every bit of heat must be removed or you end up with a wavy effect. The coolant cools and removes metal particles at the same time.

My thought is this.... the CRS will have a very long life and even thou there might be some evidence of wear the top plate will still manage to live an extremely long life.

Enclosed are two pictures showing mold wear as a result of several hundred thousand cycles.