Need help/info on making custom chocolate mold (for chocolate lolipop-ish things
 

Hi all,

My wife works for a very large, international company, and I came
up with a GREAT brown-nosing idea for her to give away chocolate
goodies around Xmas this year.

My idea is to make small (1-2" wide) replicas of the company's logo.
(Hint: it looks like a letter of the alphabet, and it's a metallic
yellow color!)

I was hoping to get in touch with someone who has experience making
their own plastic chocolate molds. I would imagine creating either a
physical model, or a 3d one in something like Alias Maya, and finding
someone with the knowledge/equipment to make a plastic mold (or 3)
that would pop out at least a few candies at a time.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can't pay much, if
anything, but would love to try to do this, as a project!

-Martin O'Brien

Martin O'Brien > wrote:

> My idea is to make small (1-2" wide) replicas of the company's logo.
> (Hint: it looks like a letter of the alphabet, and it's a metallic
> yellow color!)

You do realize that molds of all the letters of the alphabet
are already available as standard items. The color may be
the tricky part. You need either a dry or oil based food
color for chocolate. Water/alcohol based colors will "seize"
the chocolate.

> Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can't pay much, if
> anything, but would love to try to do this, as a project!

Check out Tomric. http://www.tomric.com
I know they have various sizes of letter molds. Greek letters, too,
and numbers, and Hebrew letters, and more stuff than you can
imagine. They offer a hobby line of molds that is cheaper
than the professional line, they are lighter in weight and
not as durable, but will last through dozens of uses.

If you are determined to make it yourself and you find a good
suppliers of meterials, please post back here as I am looking
for that myself. We would really like to do some custom molds
in my wife's shop, but haven't found a reasonable supplier
for food safe molding materials.

Bill Ranck
Blacksburg, Va.

I'm hoping someone else who knows more than I will come up with a better
answer but here's what I know. The bas relief type of molds, which I think
is what you are talking of, is made out of vacuum formed plastic. To make
it a solid model of the object is placed on a holed plate (something like an
air hockey table) a heated sheet of plastic is placed over it and sucked
down onto the object. If you could make some of the object out of metal or
some other heat resistant material you could then take them to a vacuum
molding company which could make the molds for you. Not every company would
know what type and thickness of plastic is needed for chocolate molds so you
may have to do some research there or give them a sample. Some airplane
modelers also set up home vacuum molding rigs to make parts for their
models.

Charles P. Lamb

"Martin O'Brien" > wrote in message
om...
> Hi all,
>
> My wife works for a very large, international company, and I came
> up with a GREAT brown-nosing idea for her to give away chocolate
> goodies around Xmas this year.
>
> My idea is to make small (1-2" wide) replicas of the company's logo.
> (Hint: it looks like a letter of the alphabet, and it's a metallic
> yellow color!)
>
> I was hoping to get in touch with someone who has experience making
> their own plastic chocolate molds. I would imagine creating either a
> physical model, or a 3d one in something like Alias Maya, and finding
> someone with the knowledge/equipment to make a plastic mold (or 3)
> that would pop out at least a few candies at a time.
>
> Can anyone point me in the right direction? I can't pay much, if
> anything, but would love to try to do this, as a project!
>
> -Martin O'Brien
>

I don't know how you would go about doing this yourself, but there are
plenty of companies out there that make custom molds. Tomric is one, also
Chocklit (sp?) Molds in Rhode Island. You could use edible gold leaf for a
high-end gold effect, or colored white chocolate or even coating (candy
melts, or summer coating) for a cheaper solution.