Building a vacuum forming machine

[Robert Lambie]

hi rodney.. i looked at buying a machine about 16 months ago.. just a smallish one for a couple of products that we later scrapped due to not knowing enough about it. like you, we wanted it cheap to try and dabble with and if a money spinner maybe buy some fancy kit.
anyway.. it didnt happen.. but i may have my old bookmarks on a floppy disk some place as i found deveral bits and peices on how this works and im sure some home made jobs. i cant promise i have them but will email it to you if i come across it later today or tommorrow.. 😀

now where is that old dusty shoe box full of old floppies 😉 😆

[elitesigns]

what size did you have in mind, and what materials, thickness etc.

i’ve made several in the past which have worked well

craig

[James kelly]

http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/vacuumtable/index.html

http://www.studiocreations.com/howto/vacuumforming/index.html

[Rodney Gold]

Thanks for replies so far.
In terms of size and substrates , it would mainly be for POS applications , perhaps cosmetic bases etc. I think max size would br 2-3ft square , more to the saller size.
I doubt I would work with anything thiker than 3mm pex , tho we do press moulds for pex , so most likley abs etc up to 2 mm thick?

Im sure with sctreen printing , the ability to do digital printing on 1mm
substrates , my 3d cnc stuff , laser cutting etc , it could be a very valuable addition. I know zilch about it tho , my prospective partner does.
On another point , the name of his business is 4D design studios , and we want to incorporate Toker , but NOT Toker Bros in it somewhere , prefferably Toker NOT in front , but I have no ideas of how to combine the 2 into a simple name that still preserves it all? Any ideas on this one? 4d Design incorporating Toker manufacturing? Thats very long and unwieldy? 4DT (4D design -Toker manufacturing) (was thinking of 4DDT – but that sounds like a pesticide)
There is one problem I forsee too , there is a co called Toko industries who are big in the packaging(jewellery box etc) market , they might object to me going into their field , but we been around and incorporated a long time before them , like 60+ years. So I don’t really want to get too close to their name and have legal hassles – we already get calls meant for them.

[Richard]

The last company I worked for built a vacuum forming machine from scratch.

We got a contract to supply ABS mouldings to support corrugated roofing panels on industrial units.

None of us had the faintest idea what was required, the boss worked on the theory that it was just like screen printing… pick up a sheet of material, put it on a machine, process it, put it in a pile for finishing.

I think his approach was a bit simplistic 😀 , but we got there eventually.

The problems are very empirical, for example, you don’t know that you haven’t got enough draw until you’ve got enough heat into your job, but you don’t know you haven’t got enough heat until you get the edge sealing right, to enable the draw, which doesn’t work because the sheet is not hot enough 😕

And don’t forget that there is no such thing as vacuum forming, everything is pushed down onto your mould by atmospheric pressure. The best you can manage is the differential between the atmospheric and low pressure sides of your sheet.

PS. that’s a thought, don’t accept that invitation to take up a vacuum forming franchise in Nepal.

Seriously though I’ll gratefully offer any helpful comment that I can think of.

[Richard]

Something else I just thought of… plumber’s compression fittings and regular push to connect pneumatic fittings rely on positive internal presure to seal properly.