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Hello Everyone,

I am pleased to announce that I am starting to reproduce molded rubber parts. Currently I am in the pre-production stage of just a few items, but the opportunities are endless.

The below photos are of a pre-production Dimmer Switch Grommet (blue) and a good used grommet (black) that I used as a pattern.

If you have any rubber or plastic parts that you would like to see reproduced, please leave a comment or send me a PM. I will need to have or get a good quality piece to make a mold of. An endless amount of colors and variety of stiffnesses are available. Please note that for prototyping below, I used a slightly "sticky" material that shows dirt easily. Anything I produce for sale will use different, normal-feeling material(s).

The Details
The molding process reproduces a very high amount of detail, to the extent that you can see the slight cracks as were in the original, as well as a couple of stray paintbrush bristles (used for prep work) that got detached and left in the mold. Unfortunately the prototype material I used picks up dirt very easily so the photo of it installed is not great; the stiffness is much too low as well. As can be seen especially in the lower left of the hole, the spacing does not look even; this is because the stiff and worn carpet is actually bending the grommet instead of the grommet holding the carpet stiff. (There is a bit of a clearance issue with the kick panel as well in this particular car.) When relaxed it is the exact shape, as is clear in the other photo. But all of these problems will be fixed in due time.

In other words, production parts will be:
- black (or the correct color)
- the correct stiffness
- without minor defects carried over from the original

As well, I will be making better molds with a different mold-making process to greatly increase the success rate of parts.

The overhead costs for molding a new item are really not terrible, so I plan on making a good variety of stuff that has only normal Packard-level market demand. If you have any ideas for things, just let me know. Or if there's not much demand but you specifically want a few of something, I could do that as well at proportionate cost.

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Spud

What type of rubber.?

For the rear axle grommets. I use flexane 80.
Liquid.

For this type of component, probably 60A durometer urethane.