I recently made a battery enclosure for my eskate out of Kydex. I made a buck from wood to represent the shape I wanted at the end then used 0.080 inch thick Kydex, heated it and pressed it over the buck.
Here is the first video about making the buck. I will be posting the rest of the series shortly.
I also plan on making an enclosure for my VESC in the next few weeks. I could potentially make these to sell if there is interest. The Kydex is much stronger than a standard ABS enclosure.
Yes, but I wanted it formed to the curvature of the deck so I either need to cut a deck up, build a mold of one, or make an enormous vacuum table. I will experiment more in the future.
Slowly increase the temperature and check it with an IR thermometer if you have one so it heats evenly. Rotate it every so often. I went up to 340*F on the 0.080.
Looks great. Do you think you could’ve formed the enclosure with just a hot air gun ? Probably would take a lot longer but it looked like you were getting some good results when you hit it with the hot air gun after taking the foam off.
It is probably possible, but the material likes to be heated slowly and evenly when possible. Also doing it with the heat gun was very time consuming compared to the part in the press. I got some different foam to try on the ESC box I will be making soon.