The Hypno Shroom

The Hypno Shroom is an injection molded childrens toy constructed of nine separate parts. The parts are made by injection molding plastic into custom milled aluminum molds. My team of four developed this childrens toy over the course of ten weeks.

The Problem

The Hypno Shroom design originated as a drawing from fourth graders at Nettlehorst Elementary (above left). Over the next ten weeks, our team worked to create a 3-D injection molded version of the Hypno Shroom (above right).

Part & Mold Design

The model was designed to be made up of four different parts, some being used multiple times, for a total of nine pieces (two mouths, four eyes, two half-truncks, one mushroom cap). The Hypno Shroom feauted a trunk and cap design with facial features on each side (one frown, one smile). The parts were designed in Siemens NX 9.5.

Using the mold creation features in NX, the parts were laid into two sets of mold blocks. Each part was designed around a parting line to ensure manufacturability. The mold design featured draft angles, runners, and gates to allow for proper plastic flow into the molds.

Mold Machining

The Computer Aided Manufacturing software within NX was used to design the tooling operantions need to machine the four individual mold halves. Hass Mills were used to machine the parts using a combination of ball and end mills of various sizes.

Injection Molding

When the molds are complete, the injection molding process begins. To create precise parts without defects requires setting the machine parameters precisely (above right). The right amount of heated polypropelene needs to be injected to fill the part properly (above right). Dyes were added to customize the part color.

Final Product

A production run of all indivual parts was run to ensure repeatability. The nine pieces (right) snap fit together to create the entire model (left). The project advanced my CAD/CAM design skills while also introducing me to field of automated milling.