Vacuum Forming

[Jackalope]

One of the processes we would like to explore is vacu-forming. I did a search and really didn't find equipment that would lend itself to our needs (mostly expensive tools for manufacturing). I remember reading about making them from an old Gillette text I think. Does anyone have a recommendation on where we might be able to purchase one? plans for building one?

Thanks

 

[derekleffew]

Parker and Smith's Scene Design and Stage Lighting, 4th edition 1979, (not sure about other editions) has a couple of pages of interest. CB member BrianWolfe will likely have some pertinent thoughts.

EDIT: This newfangled Star Wars phase appears to created a resurgence in the vacuform machine. See http://www.tk560.com/stormtrooper.html, http://www.trooperarmor.com/Tutorial/BuildVacuumFormTable.html, or Google "stormtrooper armor" for many unlicensed and illegal copies. The techniques are valuable, however.

 

[Van]

Derek Beat me to it !
Brian is a GREAT resource you should see some of the stuff he's posted on here.

 

[Footer]

Awhile back I built my own vacuum former using a heavy bag, a heat gun, and a shop vac. It worked well for small pieces but in no way can do what a larger purpose built machine can do.

 

[BrianWolfe]

I have been vacuum forming since 1981. The machines I still use were originally made for the 1964 World's Fair. If I was going to purchase a new machine I would probably get a gently used machine from Stopol.

http://www.stopol.com/equipmentsales/thermoforming/thermoforming.aspx

They specialize in buying up used machines and finding them new homes. They might have just what you need.

You can make your own and they work okay but they usually are very limited in what you can do with them. Our largest machine has a 52" x 12' bed and we can draw upto 26" tall. We have a thousand gallon evacuation tank and a 10 hp screw drive vacuum pump. All those features allow us to do big heavy jobs. Most important is what do you plan on using it for and would it be smarter to just job out the few times you might find it useful.

Feel free to ask specific questions and I will do my best to help.

 

[Jackalope]

Thanks for the advice. I wanted to do it in our own shop as an educational opportunity... who am I kidding, I'm interested in learning how to do it for myself!

 

[Van]

I love Vaccu-forming ! One of my favorite parts was the figuring out processes, how the heck to get certain shapes with certain materials. one of my favorites was a space helmet for a cucumber........ yeah seriously, a six foot tall cucumber. < veggie tales on stage>

 

[jfleenor]

This may not help you, or maybe it will. I was curious about vacuum forming, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

In my wiki-digging, I found that there was a commercially made toy that allowed you to form small items : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vac-u-form. The article also has links to a digitized [scanned] manual, and a site dedicated to the toy.

There are quite a few available on e-bay, along some of the required plastic sheets. If you're going to be forming small items, this might be useful?

Hope that helps! If not, it's good for entertainment.

 

[Footer]

This may not help you, or maybe it will. I was curious about vacuum forming, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

In my wiki-digging, I found that there was a commercially made toy that allowed you to form small items : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vac-u-form. The article also has links to a digitized [scanned] manual, and a site dedicated to the toy.

There are quite a few available on e-bay, along some of the required plastic sheets. If you're going to be forming small items, this might be useful?

Hope that helps! If not, it's good for entertainment.

Thats a pretty cool little device. I don't know how useful it would be for scenery use, but would be great for small prop work. Going to keep my eye out...

Also, that guy has WAY to many toys. I'm going to bet he either has a man cave that he keeps them in or his wife through him out long ago.

Also, that was defeinatly the good old days of toys when you could get shocked, burnt, and mutilated by your toys. I have an old toy steam engine my dad had when he was a kid. Its a pretty cool little device and something that they could never sell today.

(this is not the one I have, but its close)

 

[kicknargel]

I built my own 48 x 96. It was definitely a learning process. It works pretty well, although I'm sure it doesn't quite pull the detail of the big industrial machines. I spent about $1500 in parts and probably 120+ hours building it.

A few thoughts:
-It can be a pretty dangerous process. It takes a ton of power (we're using a 20A 220V three-phase as well as 2@20A 120V circuits) flowing through the exposed heat element. Touching that and grounding could be a very bad thing.
-We learned the hard way that for commercial accounts, Xcel Energy put a huge surcharge on your peak power draw at any one point in time, regardless of duration. So just by flipping it on while the rest of the shop was already running tools, fans, etc. Caused a $750 spike in my energy bill. Ouch.
-It took a lot of math, multimeter readings and testing to get the correct length of heating element, and make electrical connections in the correct places along the length of the element to make it all draw the correct amount of power and have it evenly distributed.
-One of the trickiest bits for us was getting a good seal between the table and the plastic.
-For a vacuum chamber, I used a couple 55 gallon drums. I braced them internally then sealed them up and installed flanges to plumb the vacuum hose. The may fatigue over time, but they were $20 instead of $1000 for a purpose-built tank.

I think making a small one (2x2 or so) could be a great educational opportunity. Making a big one might be biting off a little too much.