I’d like to show you some photos, of a vacuform machine I built myself years ago. After reading about the Mattels, that were almost impossible to get, especially in my part of the world, I decided to build a vacu machne myself. It consists of a vacu table (the lower part), a sliding frame, and the heater (the upper part).
Normally, you put a positive form on top of the vacu table and pull a heated plastic plate over it. The vacuum is provided by a vacuum cleaner.
The vacu table is a metal box with the top side made of an universal printed circuit board - it’s heat resistant and has nice, fine holes in it. The heating element is also a metal box, with components salvaged out of an old, russian electric baking oven installed, like the electrical connector, or the ceramic tubes on which the heating wire is strung. The frame can be taken out of the machine, for easier instalation of a new plastic sheet.
Here are some photos:
And here’s a 1:33 Bf-109G canopy I made using this machine:
In case of any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Thanks for reading, and have a nice day
Yeah, that’s right. You can slide the frame all the way up to the heater, or all the way down, 'till it touches the vacu table. The vacu table and the heater are connected together with the rails for the frame.
It’s not that hard - as long as you can find or build a sturdy metal box. Then you need come ceramic insulators and heating wire. I guess using the kitchen oven will do the trick too, but with more variation in the process. Anyhow, good luck vacuforming!
Several years ago I bought the book by Doug Welsh (Walsh?) on building your own vacuform machine. I was a bit disappointed with the results. While I could make a much bigger part in area (start with a much larger sheet) it would not draw much deeper than a Mattel set. It was okay for large but shallow parts, but I had been wanting something to make bigger and deeper parts. I guess I need something with both more heat and a better vacuum.
Hello Don - could you give an example, what part you would be making? My machine was until now tested with parts like canopies for 1/33 scale aircraft. If I heat the plastic sheet really well, it looks like there are reserves to use and I could make even deeper parts with it. Thanks for reading, have a nice day
Yeah, I was making a 1/8 scale sprint car. Needed parts to have a height (draw) of a couple of inches. Much more than for a 1/32 scale canopy. I ended up doing a fiberglas layup for the parts I needed.
