I designed this swimbait using fusion 360, it is about 8" (200mm) long and is the largest soft plastic I have designed so far. I decided to make the bait internally weighted with a custom design lead head jig that is set into the bait itself. I have seen this sort of thing before but I haven't seen anyone try to make one before so I thought why not.
I used deadon plastic (not sponsored) but for the testing and prototyping so far I used all remnants of the soft plastic from pouring other baits, even though it was reheat plastisol it still performed really well and the baits turned out pretty good as far as I can tell.
I used number 8/0 o'shaughnessy jig hooks for this build, I had an old bag of these hooks from a number of years ago when I used to build large bottom bouncing lingcod jigs for ocean fishing. I think I may invest in a few more to keep making this lure in the future.
Making the mold for this lure was a 4 step printing process on the anet a8 3d printer because the print bed was too small to be able to print the entire mold in one go. I needed to print all four parts separately and then piece them together with super glue to make the final mold box. Even though it was pieced together the mold turned out surprisingly well and I strategically placed the seems of the boxes in areas that would not affect the final product of the bait itself. It seemed to work out well because it does not appear to have any artifacts after being injected with soft plastic.
I designed the internal weight system within fusion 360 as a separate component so I would be able to tell where to add weight and how far I could have the lead before it would influence the look and design of the outer portion of the bait, by setting the opacity lower on the body of the lure I was able to design the two different versions of the internal weight design. I was also able to design an internal support structure that utilizes PLA 3d printed plastic to strengthen the front 50 percent of the lure to make the action more present in the tail and allow the bait to flick the tail more than the body and reduces stress on the plastic in and around the hook inside the bait. I did this because I had an initial fear that with so much plastic around the hook tear out would be a real problem if there wasn't more internal surface area to hold the plastisol to the hook. It seems to strengthen the connection quite well and helps reduce the possibilities of tear out when stressing the soft plastic.
Overall I am pleased with how this turned out and I think it's a good stepping stone to use in the future for designing, printing and injecting more complicated swimbaits.
#3dprinted #customlures #fishing
27 авг 2024
