even if they don’t have one themselves, we’d wager the typical Hackaday visitor is at least vaguely conscious of exactly how a vacuum former works on a essential level. You warm up a plastic sheet up until it’s soft, then utilize a vacuum pump to pull the ductile material down onto an item as well as hold it there while it cools off. It’s simple to develop a vacuum developing rig yourself, however little industrial units are affordable sufficient that it may not be worth your time. If whatever goes to plan, the method is a quick as well as efficient method of duplicating products around the house as well as shop.
But we were just recently tipped off to a variation of this traditional method that’s definitely worth even more research. As demonstrated in a recent video, [Nathan Martinez] shows exactly how 3D printed sheets can be utilized in location of the 5″ x 5″ squares of thermoplastic film that his imported vacuum former was developed to use. It’s simple sufficient to do: just design up a square with the suitable 2D dimensions in your CAD bundle of choice, as well as extrude it to a height of about .5 mm.
A printed fit together pattern might be utilized to type customized shaped filters or strainers.
So what’s the advantage? Well for one thing, it’s cheaper. though admittedly, not by much. Going rate on Amazon seems to be about 90 cents per sheet for the genuine stuff, as well as some back of the envelope math shows the printed version coming in at around 30 cents provided nominal filament costs. Whether or not those cost savings are worth the additional effort is definitely debatable.
But that’s not truly the most fascinating part. With printed sheets packed into the vacuum former, you’ve got gain access to to a much larger range of materials to work with. For example, [Nathan] shows off some extremely fascinating versatile pieces he was able to create utilizing sheets of TPU. You can likewise try out different surface textures. These can not only be utilized to provide your vacuum developed pieces a bit of fascinating visual flair, however might really have some useful applications. In the video we see exactly how a printed fit together might be developed over a piece to produce a conformal air vent or filter.
To be sure, there’s some space for enhancement here. Not all the pulls were successes, as well as [Nathan] states getting the printed sheets as much as the appropriate temperature can be tricky. however when it works, it works rather well, as well as we believe there might be some untapped prospective in this unforeseen melding of new as well as old techniques of at-home plastic production.
[Thanks to Japanfan50 for the tip.]