First, a quick overview of thermoforming.
This is how 501sty types make our armor. You heat a sheet of plastic until it gets soft, then pull it down over a mold and use vacuum to pull the plastic down to the mold. The plastic cools quickly and retains that shape, giving you a nice copy of the original.
For the last year or so I’ve been making clone armor at a friend’s house in Lunenburg, which is about 45 minutes – 1 hour from home.
For several months now I’ve been working on my own. Well, really this started even further back when we went from a 100 amp service in the house to a 200. This stuff takes a fair bit of juice.
Tonight was the first test of the machine, and it was a resounding success!!! There are certainly some tweaks to be done, but I did 2 pulls, and both look fantastic!
There are many ways to approach this sort of a build. At a basic level your home oven, a shop vac, and a box with a bunch of holes in it will do. As those of you who know me can attest, I tend to overdo things a bit.
I went with plans and a heater available from http://www.build-stuff.com. It was a good sum of money for both, but well worth it.
This system uses an “over/under” style of heater… you raise the plastic to the heater then lower it to the mold. Another approach is the “flip flop”, where your heater and platen (forming surface) are side by side, and the plastic flips between them via a hinge. To me, over/under makes more sense… instead of the hot plastic sagging toward your heat source it sags away.
For the vacuum, I got a good pump through Craigslist for a fraction of the retail cost. The pump sells for $700, I paid $100.
This pump uses 2 10 gallon air tanks as the vacuum chambers. The pump evacuates the air from the tanks. When I’m ready to form, I can open a valve that will allow air to rush back in to the tanks, taking the plastic down with it.
I haven’t tallied up the cost, and don’t think I want to. All things included, I’d say around $1500 – $2000 for the whole thing seems to be the right ballpark.
I’ve got a ton of pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tk7602/sets/72157623135056391/
I’ll be working on captioning them better.
Last, I leave you with 2 videos. The first pull and the first chest.
The first pull is the very first time it’s all been on. The chest is the hardest part of the project, so I wanted to try that (it worked out fine!)
For now I leave you with 2 videos of the system in action.
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