Vacuum Forming Set up -Cheap-

psychotiller

10 kW
Joined
Jan 1, 2014
Messages
949
Location
Orange County, Ca USA
This has been an off again/on again project for almost 6 months. It took me awhile to find the right oven. (One that would really tie the room together ya' know?) Then as luck would have it, I would have no way to hook it up in my shop without installing a new electrical box too...
View attachment 9

So I ditched the 220v idea all together and pulled out the bottom element. Then I replaced it with a 110v Smoker Element that I had on hand.
110v smoker element.jpg
View attachment 8

I also had a converter/inverter that I could use as the switch for the smoker element.
converter inverter 3000w.jpg

It works! definitely gets hot enough to heat the ABS to a proper temp.
glowing oven.jpg

The table is really just a 1" hole drilled through my work bench with a shop vac stuffed underneath. I used some door seal molding to shape the seal around the top.
vacuum former 1.jpg

I used 5/16" screen frames cut to oven size and then clamped together over the abs sheet.
screen frame and abs.jpg

The process is simple if you keep things in order and time it the same way every time. Pre-heat your oven, place your screened abs in the oven and wait for it to sag. It'll sag a few inches below the screen frames when it's ready to form. I left an oven rack below it just to make sure the sagging abs couldn't hit the hot element.

In this order, Turn on your vaccum, open your oven, pull the abs sheet, place it on the vac table, make sure you press it down far enough to get a good seal, turn off your oven, Let the vacuum run a couple of minutes while the abs cools.

formed abs.jpg

Now all that's left is to trim the fat off of your new cover.
8s drop pneumatic 4.jpg
New ABS Cover.jpg
 
torqueboards said:
Nice tutorial :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
I'm sure, tutorial on how to make the mold would be helpful.

Cant I have any secrets?! :shock:

I used wood. Just cut it/laminate it together to the size you need and then sand it to your liking. I also found that if I tape the top of the wood it releases from the plastic much easier. You cant see it in the pic but I put a few screws in the bottom of the mold so that I could adjust the gap between the mold and the table. Without the gap there wouldn't be enough of a vacuum to pull the ABS. Here's a pic :lol:
wood mold.jpg
 
Awesome, dude! how was the mold made, btw?

How bad did your house smell afterwards? :mrgreen:
 
neptronix said:
Awesome, dude! how was the mold made, btw?

How bad did your house smell afterwards? :mrgreen:

I have this set up out in my shop. Part of the garage, not the house. The only thing that smells is when I trim off the excess plastic. Otherwise it doesn't smell at all.

Riddle: :lol: "What has 2 hands and makes wood molds?"
 
really cool ! I was about to do this and make a DIY vacuum forming molder with a heat gun (I don't want to put ABS in my oven !) but I went the epoxy/fiber way.

great work and thanks for sharing. Hopefully oneday I will move from my floor in Paris and have a dedicated area to do DIY ... first purchase will be a DIY CNC !
 
okp said:
really cool ! I was about to do this and make a DIY vacuum forming molder with a heat gun (I don't want to put ABS in my oven !) but I went the epoxy/fiber way.

great work and thanks for sharing. Hopefully oneday I will move from my floor in Paris and have a dedicated area to do DIY ... first purchase will be a DIY CNC !


Thanks! I want to try CF next. Still a bit fuzzy on how to begin though.
 
I'm about to use a word I've learned to hate, but here it goes................ AWESOME! Seriously, this is a problem solver for many of us. Thanks for sharing an effective, yet simple way to make professional looking DIY parts. Brilliant!
 
P.S. Don't use your own oven.

I tried it and had ABS pizza afterwards... then spent 3+ hours cleaning it out so it didn't stink or taste like ABS plastic. :mrgreen: NEVER AGAIN!

There are other methods for warming up ABS sheets which you can check on YouTube.
 
Great work, this looks lovely.

I once built a really cheap vacuum forming setup.
For heating: A box built out of 15cm thick building isolation foam with a hole in it for a hairdryer.
For Vacuumforming: A box built out of MDF with holes in it with a hole for a shop vac.
Results werent perfect, but it worked.
 
torqueboards said:
P.S. Don't use your own oven.

I tried it and had ABS pizza afterwards... then spent 3+ hours cleaning it out so it didn't stink or taste like ABS plastic. :mrgreen: NEVER AGAIN!

There are other methods for warming up ABS sheets which you can check on YouTube.

Ahhh...Pepperoni, ABS and olive please :wink:

Better to have a dedicated oven, or make your own heater. There are several ways this can be done.
Space heaters, old ovens, grilling or smoking elements can be found super cheap, Boxes can be made out of MDF and aluminum foil too.
 
2wayspeaker said:
Great work, this looks lovely.

I once built a really cheap vacuum forming setup.
For heating: A box built out of 15cm thick building isolation foam with a hole in it for a hairdryer.
For Vacuumforming: A box built out of MDF with holes in it with a hole for a shop vac.
Results werent perfect, but it worked.

I tried this as well but used an old infrared floor heater. I couldn't get any consistency though and it took forever to heat up the plastic so I scrapped it.
 
torqueboards said:
It was not tasty :cry: wasted a pizza...

Maybe you could have vacu-formed the pizza into a usable enclosure?
 
Here's the newest enclosure all mounted up on my XT board. I left it 6s, and used a HiAmp Breaker, I wired a charge lead to a parallel adapter and made a parallel balance lead so that I don't have to remove anything to charge this board.
Ghetto4Bot Enclosure.jpg
 
Pediglide said:
Looks great! But how do you know if the Li-pos puffed? Can you make the enclosure clear or have wondows to see the batteries?

My charger should let me know if I have an issue with any cells. I will probably open up the case once in awhile any way to balance the batteries individually. I've only had one battery puff up on me so I'm not too worried.
 
I'm glad somebody posted this here. I've spent the last couple of months watching people do this on youtube. This is how i plan on making the enclosures for my future builds.

A lot of people use pegboard as the base for their vacuum table and also drill an additional set of holes between all the existing ones, effectively doubling the number of holes, then build a box with the pegboard on top and seal it all so that the box acts as a pressure buffer giving you a more even vacuum pull all around the mold.

For me the biggest hurtle is the oven. I need to either dig around in the intarweb and real-world flea markets and find one that can take up to a 22" piece of plastic or just decide now that all of my builds will have separate boxes for the battery compartment and electronics, or build my own oven rig.

I've seen people on youtube build vertical, square, conical ovens using space heater elements at the bottom, usually building the square cone out of plywood and lining it with aluminum foil. You then set the ABS frame on top of the cone and close a lid over it until it droops, then quickly transfer it to your vac table for molding. One guy even had his setup hinged in such a way that he could flip the mold out of the heater and onto the vac table over the mold in one flip.

You could probably also rig something up with a heat gun instead of using heater elements. I have a dewalt heat gun that will easily melt any kind of plastic. In fact i've used it before for slumping lexan, and i've seen them used for touching up the vac mold before removing the ABS from the mold to get any cracks and creases resolved quickly.
 
This might be a stupid question, but what thickness abs is the best to use? Just found an old heater element (some kind of hot stone grill thing) and got some spare osb and tinfoil for sure.
 
furp said:
This might be a stupid question, but what thickness abs is the best to use? Just found an old heater element (some kind of hot stone grill thing) and got some spare osb and tinfoil for sure.


I like to use sheets between 1/8" and 3/16" thick. And I've found that the thicker sheets seem to heat more consistently. -I haven't used anything thicker than that.
 
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