Making your own Vacuum Forming set up CHEAP

I’m take a couple tonight and send them to you

@psychotiller The memorial day oven sale was a success! i have the old oven in the garage now. As soon as i get a chance it will be time to cook some plastic in that thing.

What temp do you cook your ABS at? I know you’re using a 110 smoker element, but i wasn’t sure if you knew what temp it ran at.

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It stays under 300. But if I don’t keep an eye on the abs it will bubble. Lately it’s been so hot here I can’t get a perfect enclosure.

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If you’re still looking go get a carbon (or any other print) on there, try with hydrographics! It’s very easy and gives a high quality look.

More info please!

Hydrographics A.K.A. Water Transfer Printing or aqua-dipping.

You lay your preprinted design (most commonly used to apply camo-design to rifle-stocks and carbon to car parts) on a bath of water, activate it with an activator spray and dip your object into/trough it.

Look it up on youtube “hydrographics”. “mydipkit.com” seems to have good and affordable kits for all you american people (https://www.mydipkit.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=193)

I think its a perfect solution to give d.i.y. enclosure a nice finish.

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How big is your oven? And what length mold will your table accommodate? I may need your help!

I’ll have to measure it to be sure, but i think it will accept a 24" sheet of plastic, so 22" usable not counting a frame? I don’t have a vac table, per se. I have a form i made specifically for my decks that works but i haven’t been able to evenly heat the plastic to the degree it needs to cut those hard corners along the edge like yours seem to.

Ok…I may have to make a bigger set up.

Have you considered using a radiant/space heater to heat plastic?

yes. I built an entire “cooker” around a sunbeam space heater. It failed to sufficiently provide even heat around the edges of the plastic resulting in the sheet not conforming to the edges of the form.

I tore it down and used the framing to build my xcarve table and threw away the sunbeam. Ovens are really where its at apparently.

Yup. I too threw away the space heater in the beginning. You have to have an oven to do it right.

I’m hoping to come up with an ABS split box design that will allow my 7 plies to flex.

I’m having fiberglass boxes made for my monolithic custom builds as well as a DIY deck-and-box combo, but i want to sell smaller split-style ABS boxes with 7 ply decks as an option as well.

I’m meeting with the fiberglass guy on tuesday. I’m pretty excited. They won’t be very cheap, but they will be exactly what i need.

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Did you use aluminium foil around the edges?

I did. It didn’t make it work. Having tried both setups the space heater didn’t come close to the performance of my oven. And the oven/smoker element cost way less to build!

I’ll bet it did. I think i was about $100 into that contraption i made after all the wood and screws. But the space heater alone was around $40 and it hit the trash. At least i was able to salvage the wood.

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I used this Gazebo heating lamp 1500W

to build this .when the framed abs sheet was over the heater i covered it with a sheet of aluminum foil to retain heat, worked great !

…My oven is just a carboard box btw. Outside of box became warm but no where near of inflaming. Inside temp got up to 300°

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Thanks @psychotiller and @longhairedboy for the inspiration and all the great info I just made my first vacuum form enclosure I wanted a slight concave so I built my vacuum bed with a curve in it it took 2 attempts to get the heat right. I used .060 Kyvex

One question how do you avoid the little divots from the vacuum table holes around the edge of your enclosure?

This is for my first build a 28" mini cruiser the enclosure is ~6x11x1"

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did you just use a oven to heat you plastic @Bender

oven, I had to go up to 380º for the kyvex to get soft enough to form the first attempt was 340º and it didn’t work so well