Sunday 27 March 2011

Killing time

Whilst I am waiting for some parts to arrive for my RepRap, I found myself with an hour spare and decided to try making a vac forming machine.

It has a small footprint and is made from 12mm MDF. The clamping frame to hold the plastic sheet is 6mm MDF held together with 8xM4 bolts.

I haven't had chance to try it yet as I don't have any plastic sheet. We used to have a vac form department at work years ago but they outsourced it, so no free test sheets from there.

I intend to use it to make the domes for the Milestag sensors from acrylic sheet used on greenhouses.

Here are some pics:



Here is a side on view showing the clamping plate:

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice Tony, what is the size of platen, ie the maximum plastic sheet size it can handle.

I may have a couple of ideas

Tony said...

Max size is 22x25cm

Anonymous said...

So a full gun casing is out then, maybe you could vac some handgrips though

Tony said...

Size is limited by my ability to heat the sheets up (i.e. my oven!). Handgrips would be better reprapped as the internal fixings for switches and mounting screws can be incorporated.

Anonymous said...

How about using one of those vertical Halogen room heaters, I have used them to make plastic malleable. They are dirt cheap.