I'm planning on buying a home injection-moulding machine, and a CNC mill to generate the moulds. What I'm not entirely certain of is the software to make the moulds.

I was looking at this page and it doesn't look too hard to make a mould, but it needs a few things:

  • The ability to create very fine structures - 0.005" by 0.05" for example - channels of this sort of dimension are used to allow air to escape from the mould as the plastic is injected
  • The ability to model something then split it in half (for the upper and lower parts of the mould)
  • The ability to create "negatives" of the model. Essentially a boolean subtract, but it would be nice to not have to worry about alignment etc.


I was hoping to get the Alibre design package for the CAD part, and then possibly use meshcam to import (from STL or DXF) the design that Alibre created, and mill it out.

Anyone got any comments, help, guidance etc.? I've used CNC before (I've got a 3D printer, and a PCB "engraving" machine) but I've not got into milling parts before, so I'm all ears

Cheers
Simon