Piker Porting (Intake Manifolds)

You’re looking at $50,000-$100,000 for the mold especially if it’s steel and not aluminum. Aluminum molds don’t last very long but are cheaper to make.
3d print one with high temp media. I understand the technique, why are molds so expensive? Seems you could make 2 molds: top and bottom and then just bolt them together. I have a friend that makes molds for cosmetics, a 2 part "shoe" CNC negative ground out of a block of metal, put them together and inject the nylon embedded plastic, break the molds apart 5 seconds later, pop out the profuct and make the next one. Same for taillights. Once you make the molds. The parts are pennies a piece and production time is seconds. It would just be CNC time and design. I wonder what tooling costs for the 318-360 Performer was, they popped out thousands of them....