Nerd City

Hello. Today I did something nerdy-- I built a vacuum molder. And so, to round out my day, I thought I would share this information with my Internet community. 


Vacuum molding is a really quick prototyping and mold making technique. Basically, a sheet of heated plastic is placed over a positive form, and all the air is sucked out from under the plastic, leaving you with a really cool Darth Vader chest plate or dog helmet. I am excited about this technique because it is so easy and fast, and really pretty cheap. All told, I spent about $30 on materials. Someone still in the position to steal materials from their educational facility would probably only need to spend about $10 on plumbing parts. The only thing that was tricky to find was the plastic. I used .06" thick high impact styrene, which needs to be heated for about 45 seconds in an oven set at 450 degrees F. I bought this in a 4x8' sheet from a local plastics supplier. 


Here is a low quality photo of some auto parts that I vacuum molded today as a test.

Obviously, there are more exciting applications of this technique. Like custom ice cube trays?


But really, I thought this was worth bringing to every one's attention because it's something that I wish I had known about a long time ago. I can think of countless times it could have been helpful in sculpture classes, either for making molds, or plastic positives. On a particularly nerdy note, I think this will be a great way to make enclosures for electronics and or battery cases. As molds, you can pick up some detail with this thick plastic that I have. Probably a thinner plastic would yield more surface texture. I have heard that you can use sheets of acetate -- but I would be really careful about over-heating it. Also, you might end up needing a "mother-mold" to hold the acetate in shape when you pour plaster or whatever into it so it won't bulge under the weight. The thing that I think is really nice is how smooth and shiny plaster would become in a mold like this. If anyone back at school tries this, show it to Schiff, I think he would be pretty interested.


The details of making one of these machines are pretty well documented elsewhere on the Internet (I looked at a few "instructables" and at a handful of YouTube videos to get the gist of it) so I've just attached a brief document outlining how I made my vacuum molding device. 

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

I hope everyone is doing well, and that this is helpful information.

See you later,

- Cara