Just finished making a vacuform machine to make a new canopy for a 1/32 scale Avenger and it worked great, I used peg board with some more holes drilled in it. However I’m wondering if smaller holes would have been more effective, I also have an old Matel vacuformer and the holes are quite small- what do think would be better if I should ever make another one?
ICIT
It is my impression that the hole size in your ( and my) Mattel Vacuform were designed small due to the relatively limited amount of suction created by the hand pump.
Increasing the amount of suction would require an increase in the area through which the air must flow, otherwise the increasing the amount of vaccuum would be ineffective.
Refering to my experience using my Mattel Vacform:
If I was unable to create sufficient suction, ( perhaps my master covered too many holes in the stage ) then my part would not be fully formed and lack detail.
If you were able to create a canopy incorporating the same amount of detail as your master then I presume you have the correct balance of vacuum vs evacuation hole area and locations.
There are probably others who can refer you to a website which lists more specific information.
Apropos of nothing, as usual.
I find the plastic that prewashed salad stuff comes in is good for plunge molds.
The lids.
Mmmmmm. I can still smell the odor of hot plastic and feel the pain of burned fingers!
Nowadays my parents would have been arrested and I’d be in CPS!
Anybody who’s seriously interested in vac-forming ought to take a good look at this:
http://www.micromark.com/compact-vacuum-forming-machine,11244.html
I don’t have one, but it looks like a good machine. Check out the instructions and video.
The price is a bit steep, but I’m sort of thinking about buying one. My favorite subject is sailing ships, and this looks like just the thing for making small boat hulls. For instance, the fishing schooner I’m working on now needs ten identical dories. If I could carve one wood master and use this gadget to turn out ten hollow copies…
Hello!
Many years ago I’ve built my owm vacu machine - you can take a look at it here:
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/tools_techniques_and_reference_materials/f/23/t/151922.aspx
No matter if the holes are big or small (you want them small to not interfere with small masters), their collective surface has to be sufficient - you want many small holes to be on the safe side. I used a universal printed circuit for that - this way I didn’t have to drill them, and the working area was already made of a material that is heat resistant.
The machine professor Tilley posted looks nice - sure is more compact than the one I have - you don’t need the vacuum cleaner to use it. In my opinnion the price is OK in the sense that it would be more expensive to build something comparable yourself. I’m just wondering how much would the shipping of this baby to Poland cost…
Sometimes, for small/shallow masters you don’t even need a machine - in such cases it often is enough to secure the master, like in a vise, heat some plastic sheet and “pull” it around the master - I used this method several times, for example to do seat pans in 1/35 scale.
Good luck with your projects and have a nice day
Paweł
LOL !
Speaking of burned fingers and jail time for parents;
had one of these, too!
Kenner Mold Master
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152203411612222.1073741847.127563827221&type=3
Got a lot of playtime from injection molding those items.
Resin casting is an option for small boats. If your carving ability is good enough for hollowing, you have it made. Otherwise, for non-stacked boats, carve it with canvas covering. I have done it the latter way, to cast three boats from one master. Making the silicone molds is pretty easy. A bottle of material is a bit expensive but still a lot cheaper than a vacuform machine.
Casting a hull over a carved plug is a good solution for many kinds of boats. It certainly would have worked on the last ones I had occasion to make, which were eighteenth-century carvel-built hulls.
The Grand Banks dory, though, is an exception. I guess it could be done, but I think there are easier and better ways.
The typical dory has four or five lap-straked planks on each side. The typical schooner carried ten, stacked up in two stacks on either side of the waist. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of a dory with a cover on it.)
I figure in 1/96 scale it ought to be practical to make them about the way the originals were - out of individual planks, upside-down, over a wood mold. Then the boat gets flipped over and all the internal parts get added - frames, thwarts, etc. (A lot of that detail won’t be necessary for any of the boats except the ones on top of the stacks.)
I’ve got some holly veneer that might work. I’m thinking, though, that the right material may be Bristol board (a fairly heavy, hard-surfaced white paper that’s remarkably easy to work with). I’ve got several good sets of plans (including those by Chapelle and Willits Ansel, and an odd little book called The Dory Model Book, by Harold “Dynamite” Payson).
But the vac-forming idea has its attractions. It would be a lot quicker, it would guarantee consistency from boat to boat (important so they stack properly), and I could add the internal details as necessary from wood or styrene. I’ll have to meditate more before I conclude whether that machine would be a good investment - though I could certainly find more uses for it.
Bluejacket sells cast metal dories, but - with all respect to Bluejacket, one of my favorite manufacturers - they really aren’t very good. The planks are way too thick, the “plank” detail is crude, and they have flat bottoms. (That’s an absolute no-no for a Banks dory. The bottom is supposed to be flat in cross section, but it sweeps up at the bow and stern.) The cast metal ones that came with the Model Shipways Elsie are pretty poor as well. About the only 1/96 dories I know about that might work are the styrene ones that came with the old Pyro/Lifelike/Lindberg Gertrude L. Thebaud (aka “American Cup Racer”). Each kit has only four, and given the prices those kits are claiming these days ( http://www.oldmodelkits.com/index.php?detail=26081&cat=Civil%20Ship&manu=Lindberg&erl=Lindberg-1-96-American-Cup-Racer-710 ), the thought of buying three to get ten dories is pretty much out of the question. Further medititation is called for.
The schooner model itself is coming along pretty well, now that I’ve reconciled myself to the fact that I’m just not as good at such things as I was thirty years ago (and that I need magnification for much of the work). I’ve been taking in-progress photos of it; once I become genuinely confident that it’s actually going to get finished, I intend to start a Forum thread about it.
Thanks to everyone for responding, I tried the pull over method without the vacumformer with interesting results- I will have to try that for some real projects in the future.
ICIT
I bought this upgrade kit for my old Mattel vacuform and it really made a difference in performance.
test
Edit. I guess the link fucntion doesn’t work anymore.
http://www.gaugepods.com/vacuform/parts.htm
Thanks for posting that link, Wing_nut.
I need to restock with more clear plastic sheets.[:D][Y]
The hyperlink featyure still works for external hyperlinks.
The proceedure is a bit more complex as the software doesn’t automatically insert the address in the URL box and the user must edit the “Text to Display” down to the name given “parts.htm”.