Compact All-In-One Vacuum Forming Machine For making small, highly-detailed vacuum formed components, this desktop machine can't be beat. The all-in-one design includes an overhead heater for softening the plastic sheet, a clever lever-operated transport frame that lowers the plastic sheet over the pattern, and a base unit containing an extra-strong-vacuum chamber to draw the plastic tightly over the pattern. Use it to make airplane canopies, tire molds, rock and retaining wall molds, dollhouse decorations, model junkyard debris, railroad flat car loads, hopper car loads, coal piles, wall and roof panels, and so much more. Industrial-quality machine is capable of making thousands of moldings.
Works with clear, white, black, tinted or opaque plastic sheets up to.040 inch thick. Note: Not for use with polycarbonate. Sheet size: 5 inch square.
Maximum pattern length: 5 inches when placed diagonally in the 4 inch square chamber. Includes steel beads that support patterns with irregular bottom surfaces.
First we will build the oven. The oven consists of a wood frame with an inner layer of hardibacker cement board and an aluminum inner lining. To build the wood frame you will need some 1x3 lumber, which you can get from Home Depot or Lowe's. For the parts of the oven I will refer to the part numbers form the.pdf file of all. An easy to build, home-made, vacuum forming or molding machine. How I Built a Vacuum Forming Rig It was quick, easy and cheap. You can do it too.
Overall dimensions: 8 inches wide x 10 inches deep x 12 inches high. Weight: 10-1/4 pounds.
110vAC line cord; 4 feet long. A neat machine that fills a void for the hobbyist who needs a plastic vacu-former.
I had been using a vacu-form box that required being put in my kitchen oven with my household vacuum as the suction. It was very unwieldy and didn't produce great results. This machine does it all! Very solid construction, and the internal vacuum is quite powerful. I haven't tried the ball bearings included for irregular shapes yet. I wish this machine had a timer for when the plastic is ready to 'form' over the master, but I guess that's not feasible, with different thicknesses of plastic being used for different projects. So I have to do the trial and error thing, but I do walk away with a quality usable form.
This is a great machine at a decent price. Definitely recommended!
I saw your site again last night, and almost added it. I was kinda in Make magazine and Instructables mode, and was pretty sure yours was posted before. Besides, yours is more of a real one, not so hack and slash!
It looks like part of your site is currently down. Will that be up sometime soon?
The Instructables site also has some tutorials on making your own vacuum pump. I'm sure not as powerful as a comercially made version, nor as convenient as a vacuum. But it looked interesting. Plus the DIY CNC machines. The vacuum pumps might be handy for degassing silicone. For a kitchen oven setup, I think this design is better than the one in Make, in several ways: (If I do say so myself.
) Here's a little movie of it in operation: Anybody interested in vacuum forming should get Doug Walsh's book, Do It Yourself Vacuum Forming for the Hobbyist. It's good and it's cheap. There are a lot of lame pegboard-covered-box vacuum former designs out there, but Doug showed how to do it better years and years ago. (A better vacuum former doesn't have to be harder to make, either.) tk560 is the place to go if you're interested in making bigger vacuum formers cheaply. How well does that electric grill work? I always heard it didn't heat evenly or hot enough.
ScottIt's hot enough, if you disable the thermostat, but doesn't heat evenly because it's not really big enough. (There's a big hot spot in the middle.) You can fix it easily, though, with a disposable aluminum grill topper.
(About $1) Add an aluminum flashing skirt (about $6) and it's very nice. (My platen's not quite as big as Ralis Kahn's, though. It's 12' x 18'.) Here's a thread on that: Given those fixes, it's a good choice for making smallish stuff like masks. Nokia Mobile Phone Tools Free Download. The over-and under arrangement is nice and compact.
I wouldn't make a platen like Ralis Kahn does, though. I'd at least put more spacers under it to support the cookie sheet. If you don't, and you ever add a higher-vacuum source than a vacuum cleaner, you may crush the platen or break molds. The other problem people have had is finding the little electric grills with rectangular heating elements. (You can't get the Sunbeams anymore, apparently.) That thread also says where to find them. (Wal-Mart.) It may be a seasonal item, though, so if you want one you should probably grab it soon. Drastic Ds Emulator Free Full Download For Android here.