How-To: Large Homemade Vacuum Forming Machine. Sean Michael Ragan. I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. Vacuum Forming for the Hobbyist PDF eBook digital download12.95. Build your own low cost equipment using hardware store items and your kitchen oven as.
Vacuum Forming for the Hobbyist PDF eBook digital download 12.95 Learn how to use heat and vacuum to mold flat plastic sheets into complex shapes. Build your own low cost equipment using hardware store items and your kitchen oven as a heat source.
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This popular book takes a common manufacturing process and boils it down to its simplest form, so it can be done right in the home. Its a mystery to me why vacuum forming is so largely ignored in the hobby and craft fields. Its a fast and easy way to mold high quality plastic parts. Best of all, it requires no special skills and very little equipment. This book goes beyond vacuum cleaners as a source of suction and shows you how to get 5 times more forming power. Chapter 2 tells why heat lamps and heat guns won't work well, and shows how to use your kitchen oven and alternate heat sources Chapter 1 - The Basics Vacuum Forming (also called Thermoforming), is a simple process that uses heat to soften a plastic sheet, and then vacuum to suck it down tightly against a pattern or mold.
The plastic quickly cools and retains this shape. You can start with flat plastic sheets up to 1/4 inch thick and heat them in your kitchen oven. The mold or pattern can be made from wood, plaster, epoxy resin, aluminum, plastic and many other materials or built up from a combination of materials.
Many times, you can form over an existing part. This process makes 'Shell' type parts that can have many uses. Some examples are: Candy Molds, Toys, Model car bodies, Model airplane parts, Boat hulls, Signs, Holiday decorations, Soap and Candy molds, Containers and packaging. Chapter 2 - Heat Sources Most plastics require between 250 and 400 degrees F. To get soft enough. We are not trying to melt the plastic, just make it soft like a sheet of rubber.
Your kitchen oven was designed to heat food at these temperatures, so its a safe and convenient way to heat plastic as well. This chapter shows the differences between gas and electric ovens and how to use them effectively.
Find out why heat guns and heat lamps should be avoided. Other heat sources are discussed, such as, electric frying pans and griddles, toaster ovens, hot plates etc., with advice on using each one.
Chapter 3 - Vacuum Sources A simple explanation of what vacuum is and how its measured, with charts and conversion tables. Vacuum is commonly rated in 'Inches of Mercury' (IN. HG.) Most commercial vacuum forming is done with 25 -27 IN.HG. With a maximum of about 30 inches possible.
Note: Vacuum cleaners only pull 4 to 6 IN.HG. Out of a possible 30 IN.HG. Don't be fooled by the commercials that show them picking up bowling balls. It doesn't matter how many horsepower, or how loud it is, or how much it dims the lights. Even the best 'Shop Vacs' don't pull very hard, they just flow a lot of air! This is barely enough to form thin plastic sheets with marginal definition. Learn how to increase that 50% by coupling two vacuum cleaners together.
Seven other low cost sources of higher vacuum are discussed, such as. Intake manifold vacuum (from your car), Modified bicycle pumps, air powered and electric pumps.
Learn how to modify a bicycle pump to pull 27 IN.HG. And use stored vacuum form tanks. Learn how to get 5 times more forming power by combining a vacuum cleaner with another higher vacuum source to create a 'two Stage' system. You won't find this information available anywhere else! Chapter 4 - Forming Equipment Learn how to make a simple holding frame out of aluminum angle from the hardware store, and use this frame with inexpensive spring clips to hold a plastic sheet for heating. See ideas for simple vacuum boxes made from cake pans, and more sophisticated two stage vacuum boxes. Learn how to modify a sump pump check valve from the hardware store to combine a vacuum cleaner with a second higher vacuum source.
This method uses the speed of a vacuum cleaner, but finishes off with a more powerful vacuum source. The valve is easy to make and works automatically. Chapter 5 - Plastics There are a million types of plastic sheets, but only a half dozen that you are likely to come across. This chapter discusses the common types and gives you practical advice on choosing a plastic for your application.
Properties such as impact resistance, forming characteristics, pre-drying, and cost are considered. Useful tips on where to buy plastic sheets and how to deal with plastic distributors. Chapter 6 - Molds The theme of this book is 'low budget', so this chapter focuses mainly on wood and plaster molds. Learn six 'common sense' rules of moldmaking, such as avoiding undercuts, surface preparation and the use of release agents. Read important information on using hollow molds and forming over existing objects. An example shows how to cast a plaster mold to reproduce an existing model car body.
Chapter 7 - Forming Once you have the equipment built, this chapter gives you practical advice on the actual forming process. Learn how to tell when the plastic is ready to form and learn about common problems and how to solve them.
Photographs show sample parts made with different plastics. A detailed example is given that shows how to form a radio controlled model car body over the plaster pattern created in the last chapter. Chapter 8 - Finishing Learn three ways to trim out the finished part depending on thickness. Read about glues and paints for different plastics.
Note:The back of the book contains a supplement with more forming tips and solutions to common problems, as well as information on plans that are available for building your own machines with built in ovens. Please visit the book index on this website for other books and plans on vacuum forming equipment.
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange, or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the cheap, make yourself, or refurbish. When I was a kid, there were few toys more exciting, and more well-used, than my Mattel Vac-U-Form and Creepy Crawler Thingmaker. These were sort of the proto-MakerBots and RepRap machines of our boomer youth. Both toy lines got dropped, changed hands, and then got wimpified (read: “made safer”). You can still get a modern version of the Creepy Crawlers Workshop.
When my son was small, we got him one and it was somewhat disappointing. The resulting bugs were more brittle than the originals and that noxious chemical tang from the original Plasti Goop was gone (and where’s the fun in that?). The peanut butter jar vacuum former But not to worry.
You and your kids can still have fun cloning the toys and knickknacks around your house with near-molten plastic! You can make your own vacuum forming device and it’s surprisingly easy. When I was editing, we included a project for making your own vacuum former out of a plastic peanut butter jar. I ended up making one myself and doing a demo on making them at the second Maker Faire Austin.
This would be a great project to do with your kids. It’s just challenging enough to feel like you’ve really accomplished something, but not so involved or time-consuming that the kids will lose interest. And when you’re done, you’ll have a tool that they can use — with adult assistance — to start copying anything they can think of that will fit onto the device’s “workspace.” Once you’ve worked the bugs out, you can even graduate to a plastic storage tub or other larger container, giving you a more substantial workspace. In the Instructable, author Adam Harris graduated to a plastic trash can and metal baking dish for the workspace. Here’s the of the chapter from with all of the build instructions. Here’s the original Instructable: This short video, by author Adam Harris, shows the peanut butter jar vacuum former in action. As somebody who’s built one of these, here are some tips on construction and operation that I’ve discovered:.
Take the time to drill your vacuum holes carefully and evenly on the workspace. You want the most even suction you can get, so plenty of holes, evenly spaced, is best.
Sealing all of your seams is important. I didn’t used the Saran Wrap for sealing, as recommended in the project, but used liberal amounts of epoxy to seal up all of the joints. You really do need a shop vac or other vacuum with serious suction power. And you want to make sure the vacuum nozzle mates well with the “port” you create on your vacuum former.
You need to get the plastic stock really soft and floppy to get a good mold. This is one of the hardest things and takes some practice. You want to get it as soft as possible without burning a hole in it. Once you get the distance of your heat source, the heating motion, the time, etc. Down, you should be fine.
Beside the proper heating, the next hardest part is the actual vacuum forming. You need to instantly get the soft plastic material in its frame over the object to be cast and get the vacuum going. It takes two people to best handle all of this. You also want to make sure you pull the plastic frame down as far as it will go over the object and then turn on the vacuum. Knowing this little dance, of moving from the heating of the frame, to covering the object, and introducing the vacuum, all in the shortest span of time, takes some practice too. If you build this and get the bug for the process, there are plenty of other projects for vacuum formers with much better “resolution” and much bigger workspaces. MAKE Volume 11 had a project, on making a simple one you use with your oven.
You can also search on “vacuum forming”, Instructables, YouTube, and Google to find plenty of other examples. If you do build the peanut butter jar device, or any other vacuum former, please tell us about it in the comments below. And load images to the. More:.