I got a Vacuum Former! Is it useful? 

Thanks to Critical Dice and 1985 Games for sponsoring this video! CHECK OUT THEIR KICKSTARTER: bit.ly/DeckStories Also thanks to Mayku for sending me a Formbox to play with. If you think the machine could be great for you (I'm sure it has lots of cool uses for the right person) you can grab one on Amazon: MAYKU FORMBOX (USA) amzn.to/3mxqRD2 (Canada) amzn.to/32FSyBH (UK) amzn.to/2ZOxLtX (Germany) amzn.to/2FH8sTJ SHEETS (USA) amzn.to/35Sqqxd (Canada) amzn.to/3mBNOoz (UK) amzn.to/3mwwdhT (Germany) amzn.to/2FxMYZz (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)

Uncle Jeremy, I enjoyed your take on the FormBox! Your videos are SO well-done, my man! It was definitely a learning process for me. Key things I took away from my first time using the FormBox (and vaccu-forming in general): - Watch the sag (I no longer use the timer) and drop it before it sags TOO low. Helps reduce webbing/creases. - When forming around multiple items, I found they need to be spread out a bit (at least a half-inch, I'd say) to get a form around each item. Otherwise the plastic sorta joins across them. - When starting out, I would basically slam it down (the heavy-duty locking mechanism at the top almost forces you to, so it's tricky) but now I break/unlock that upper hold and then EASE it down a little, allowing the plastic to form down and around the part before pulling suction. - Shape of object is important. My bucks/forms for action figure blisters, when rounded, worked better than hard-edged versions, in terms of reducing webbing. As always, slick job on this video! :D

It speaks volumes about the hobby when the foam packaging is the first thing that grabs my attention.

Adam savage has a great video on his own home made one but shows how to use it and how to get around alot of the issues you where having

Thank you for the new video and for showing me that I don't need a vacuum former.

Good for making nissen huts - no undercuts!

01:00 - - "Until recently it hasn't been an 'at home' technology." Kids these days. Mattel introduced the "Vac-U-Form" back in 1965 for making small plastic toys. It came with over 50 molds. "You can tell it's MATTEL, it's swell!"

A previous job had me working around the industrial version of these things, and I made a troubleshooting guide for them. So, here's some tips for you: For soft corners and poor detail: -Most of your problem areas are for deep, steep draws. You might be pushing the limits of the process for those, at least at this scale. -Your best bet is to get the sheet hotter, or increase the vacuum power -For inner details, additional vacuum holes might be needed like you said. -The way industrial thermoformers deal with intricate detail is to have a vacuum mold on one side of the sheet, and a pressure chamber on the other. (In those machines, the heater is off to the side. The sheet is moved horizontally out of the heater, and the mold and pressure box are raised/lowered to sandwich the sheet) For corner webbing: -This is the opposite problem. The material is too hot and has too much slack. -Try heating the sheet for a little less time or a lower temp. -If the webbing is on an outside corner, you can add random features outside of the part that will just take up some of the slack.

Best use for a vacuum former machine: a vehicle or something with complex curves. Carve a buck from wood, suckdown styrene over it and you have a great form for putting other greeblies on. Relatedly: vehicle canopies. Same idea, but in clear.

whenever ive used vac forms, the inside of the "form" has way more detail, you should pour in some casting plaster and see what i mean :)

One thing I did when I had access to a pro vacuum former back in art school was to make inverted molds. That requires casting the piece you want to reproduce in plaster, drilling that full of little holes, and then sucking into the negative. This makes things WAY more crisp. I'd love to make dimensional maps of my world with this technique someday. One way you could probably get some use out of your vacuum former would be to do tiles for terrain that's going to get the full grout/grass treatment on top. Though it wouldn't be significantly faster than just carving foam, so...

Back in the seventies I made s vaccuform frame, used my oven,and s good shop vac for suction and it worked fine. At that time I was making canopies and other parts for model aeroplanes and tanks. Winging it does have a lot of benefits.

Professional Vacumformer. Sealed box hooked to a shopvac, with a heating element. I have worked with one for a couple of years ages ago :). using heat resistant gloves to smooth out the plastic will give you better results. and you are on the right path that air holes will give you better results. the vacuformer is good for grebels and making cosplay armor quickly. Another use is to make wrecked vehicles cheaply.

My dad had a Mattel Vacu-form for his slot car racing hobby in the early 60s. The ideal moldable form is going to have holes in it to enable suction around the forms. It also looks like you weren't getting the plastic (styrene?) to a proper temperature.

When I was in the army, a machine like this was used to make signs to direct nits to various locations during major exercises. The bonus for me was that the plastic sheets were PERFECT for making model buildings for my model railroad and building things for my D&D playing friends, (I have been making terrain for about 50 years) The best part of making terrain for that long is that I am still learning new skills from people like yourself, the members if the Tabletop Crafters and model railroaders...

It's a specialized tool, but when you need it you really need it. You can use it for making food molds, packaging, drawer inserts, helmet visors, masks, curved panels, and tons more things.

I can see potential for making a mold of various tiles, inclines, stairs, and other mostly-flat surfaces. You could mass-produce basic versions and get creative with the post-mold detail work (roughing the surfaces, tweaking the paint palettes, the list goes on). Some ideas: -The walls of cages (like you've made previously) can be reproduced with a medium that may be sturdier and easier to assemble -You could mold miniature scaffold plates and gears for industrial builds and recreate them with a less-rigid medium to more-easily create effect details (chips, dents, melting, tool marks, etc.) -With practice it may be possible to merge shapes, like the front of a skull merged with a metal fence for an ornate door piece

I used to use one of these when I was younger to make custom shells for RC cars and boats, they can be pretty fiddly to get the temperature settings just right, but once you get that dialled in they can be pretty useful. And you’re right about the air holes, for larger or more complex shapes they are crucial.

I know multiple people have said Adam Savage, but also Bill Doran from Punished Props Academy has made a few videos about vacuum forming and making his own small and large scale formers. He made vacuum formed space helmet visors for Adam Savage, in fact.

One thing that can help is a hair drier or heat gun - soften the plastic where those ridges are forming. I built one, oh, around 1983, I think - for making costume armor for a recreation society - large items, low detail, but for the task it worked well. But it was also designed to take 3 foot sheets of plastic. And fairly rugged - not up to SCA style combat, but good enough for boffa weapons. About the mid nineties there was a company using one about the size of the one you have for making low detail facades for fantasy terrain - the ones I used were Geigeresque Tyranid terrain. They also made a 25mm scale version of the big tank from Steve Jackson's game Ogre.

I used to build bucks for the vacuform. Mostly it was specialized trays for jewelry display cases. Later I made shaped trays for my crafting tools. I would fill the bottom of the trays with latex foam to make them more resilient. My tool box is a thing of beauty.

Drops the sheet. ME: VACUUM! VACUUM! COME ON! Whew! Cool toy, but as you mentioned, little pricey for the home user. I've got a friend in Saskatchewan that uses a bigger homemade rig to form plastic for armor for the medieval fighting we do.

Man, I've made so many things on vacuum formers over the last twenty years. They're freaking awesome. Just needs a bit of planning to get good results. I've never just grabbed something and stuck it in the vacformer. It's always a planned process.

we did some vacuum forming in college. Sometimes the ridges are due to the plastic sheet not being hot enough, sometimes it's due to parts being too tall, and sometimes it's just bad luck.

I remember getting some vacuum formed airplane model kits back in the 90s, they were so bad they gave me PTSD for the technology :)

creating the bucks (that's how the pieces are called, from what you make the form of) is an form of art for itself

Adam Savage over at @tested did a video on vacuum bucks (the name for the mold portion). Apparently they made most of Star Wars with these.

From what I can see you need more suction and more heat - vacuum forming is great in certain circumstances. I have used one in making parts for dollhouse miniatures namely trashcans, and kitchen plates etc. And in war-gaming terrain to make armour plates or with patients things like electrical towers. The taller the item you are forming the more heat you need to get the appropriate sag in the material. With the toy panels and the like if there are recesses in the middle that do not connect to the perimeter of the object, they need draft holes drilling through them for the vacuum to work. To make moulds from the rocks just build up the bases with play-doh or similar to eliminate undercuts.

If you are old enough you will remember Bellona vacuum-formed model tanks. I still have a French Somua tank in 1/72nd from the 1970's. A friend of mine did a German A7 from WWI. Today, you'd use a 3D printer.

- corrugated metal panels - basins for water tiles - clear plastic for fire effects and lighting

Two thumbs up! This was a good assessment for someone who has never used a vacuum former before. I recommend taking a little time to understand these tools and their quirks. I think you have only scratched the surface of its usefulness and hope you can experiment with it again in future videos.

Could be fun to make some moulds for modular sci-fi corridors and floors, with built-in grid patterns from plastic mesh and other generic textured surfaces. You could probably make a negative of various different textures to use with Green Stuff or other modelling materials, for use with bases etc. Thing to do is use foam board as your overall base-layer because you can use a pin to poke plenty of holes in it for the vacuum to pull the plastic into corners.

Watching other makers using vacuum form machines, Adam Savage, Punished Props, it seems they always help the vacuum along by pressing the plastic down close to the object with their fingers, usually with gloves for heat protection, to help mold the plastic to the tight spots right when it first forms the vacuum

I had the Mattel Vacu-form machine when I was a kid and then I worked for a business doing professional LARP where we used a professional vacuum forming company to make SF wall panels. My experience is that they're a special-use tool that is very nice for a limited number of applications. * They're really good for making smoothly curved surfaces (or rather making copies of smoothly curved surfaces). They're not as good with sharp edges. * You have to have a place to evacuate the air in each dip and it has to be capable of passing enough air volume for the shape. This is tricky to figure out. * You often want to have some stand-off from the suction bed, because the plastic will crease and if you can raise the piece, that crease can be moved to a place where it doesn't matter. * Molded parts are strong in compression along the axis of suction, but very weak in other directions, especially near the edge after you cut it away from the waste plastic. Plan on supporting any edges well. * High-relief pieces are very problematic, and tight detail is nearly impossible to replicate. * As you mentioned, thin clear pieces are a good use case for this tech, whether vehicle canopies or windshields or building windows. (You can always make parts opaque when you want.) * If you want anything with undercuts, you'll have to make the part in multiple pieces. And assembling multiple pieces of thin vacuum formed plastic is ... tricky. Broadly, I would use a 3D printer for almost all small pieces today (obviously not available until pretty recently) and only consider vacuum forming for large pieces or possibly for smoothly curved transparent pieces where printing lines would be a problem.

Plenty of people have already made their own, they are fairly common. There's a ton of things you could do with one. Have a few basic containers that you've turned into a prop base, like columns, but only have the one? Make copies! Then you can decorate them. And with some practice making molds is pretty easy. As for the lines, part of the issue is the strength of the vacuum, which is why some use vacuum pumps to empty a tank and then pull the air very quickly. The rest is mostly due to the shapes being used/too many shapes too close together. For more detail you need vents in the piece.

Many years ago I operated a factory vacuum former making refrigerator insides. My guess that most of your problems is not enough suck and maybe not enough heat. Try with a more powerful vacuum cleaner or compressor that does suck as well as blow and I think you'd see a difference in the way the plastic forms around the object. Also as you said undercuts are a no-no.

Vacuforming is an art unto itself. To get cleaner lines where you want them, add more (or less, lol) pressure; ie put oblique (toe nail) aspects in the hard detail. Don't take much, 1mm holes around the points where your vac to get clean detail is a good start. The 'flow lines' you get when forming (those annoying areas where the plastic adheres to itself instead of the plug) can be overted with downward pressure to the area of contention before appling vaccume (a damp rag will work for simple molds)

Think it would definitely help having something to raise the item you want to vacuum form up about an inch underneath said item to keep from webbing up towards the base of the buck.

A simple technique mastered by many 12 year old school children here in the UK - when taught Craft Design Technology. You can imagine the amount of laughter when I watched this video.

Very cool! You can help to vacuum machine when it form plastic form with small wooden stick or even with fingers in gloves. Press near edges of master model to make it shape better.

With vacuum forming the details are better on the inside, therefore better for moulds.

vacu-form is in fact a bit of an art. Learning how and where to add vacuum holes and what parts to add height to to get clean pulls just takes time and practice. I love the windows idea, that is a really great use for it.

I so want a vacuum former. Thanks for going through all the different shapes. Nice to know there is one for home use.

I see the vacuum formed products more on lightweight RC-models than on tabletop gaming. But you can produce very fast storage trays for transportating miniatures.

You could incorporate that plastic 'webbing' the vacuform makes on the edges of the mould when doing far more organic items that could need some added weirdness, similar to those spider cocoons you did a while back.

I use packs of styrene from Slaters Plastikard, have done since the 60s, I also use their microstrip and microrod quite a lot. You can make similar items by heating a sheet of plasticard under the grill until it goes floppy, laying it over the master and pressing down with a folded towel (or make a piece with a matching hole and pushing that down over the master, I never managed to do that right though). Airfix mag back then often had things like 'build the trainer version of this aircraft' in which you carved a balsa insert and then made the longer canopy using a plunge mould (I still have the scars, never was any good at that) or building some truck and moulding the mudguards round the end of a hot poker (also have scars from that). Back then Bellona Mouldings sold a wide range of vac-formed scenic items, these days a similar but smaller range is available from Amera Mouldings, cheap, sturdy and can be damned handy. The masters take a hammering in vac-forming so they don't last as long as an injection mould, but the end result is cheaper. As the other commentator mentioned an inverted mould provides you with way better results. You can also build a vacuum box, the heating element is inside the box and once the plastic has softened you let the air in to press it down over the mould, too technical for me. Since I retired I fill my free time making up sets of toy soldiers to give away, adding the things you can't buy such as bunkers with removable roofs and loads of terrain etc. The rule of threes means I have to try and make three of some things and a machine might be handy in particular for sci-fi craft (kits are no longer pocket money items and things come and go - try finding the Airfix Orion space shuttle, my preferred transport aircraft, or the Heller Frellon which was the basis for my hover-jet transports, very Jerry Anderson). Having made the parts you then need to develop the skills to use them as kit-parts, there is a lot of trimming and there are some truly arcane techniques used with vac form kits but when the alternatives are nothing or $illy money I'm still tempted and will take a look at the link.

This tool is perfect for making the following items: -Shields for minis -Radar dishes -Engine nozzles -Doors -Starship hulls -Aircraft fuselages Basically anything that either needs to be thin and strong, or else large and lightweight.

the opaque ones are good for making the base of wall sections, instead of needing modpodge - you can create several copies of a basic tile or terrain section, have a few dozen of them, and then detail them all differently to have variety, without needing a lot of expenditure on the structure the details go on (for example, making a small hill or a wall segment to duplicate, and then adding the colors and details afterwards to make the hills all have different tree layouts, but they all have teh same, easily pathable central section o put minis on) This would be extra useful for making 'before and after' setpieces, such as a winter hillside and its summer version, making sure the hills themselves are identical easily.

Amazon also sells a self contained unit, i.e. built in vacuum, used in the dental office. The sheets are smaller and there is a wide selection in different thicknesses and materials. They can make rubbery mouth guards or hard mouth guards also there are sheets that burn out cleanly to be used in lost wax type casting. Lots of uses including aircraft canopies, model auto windshields, parts to be painted, or even reusable food molds like for chocolate. The dental unite on Amazon is $119.99!

I feel like this could be really useful to make Necron Tombworld tiles

The last few months have been super hard, isolation, no work, and then my Father passed from diabetes Sept 9th, wasnt even allowed to say goodbye cuz of the Covid bs. To keep my mind off things and get away from the reality of life ive started to collect and makeup a crafting bench and I have to send some thank yous to you BMC, ive been binge watching all your videos and they have been very helpful in keeping my mind off life and into a new hobby im really enjoying, first projects im gonna start tmw is your basic foam core tiles, got 2 sheets, its the easy peel kind, and even found a store here that has an amazing selection of paints and Mod Podge in bulk available, even got a local foam insulation installer willing to give me all his extra cut ends and pieces (a good source of free foam for anyone, just talk to your local foam insulation installer). My goal project is to recreate my old HeroQuest gameboard using LED lights, anyways, Thanks BMC for being here for me, unintentionally you have cheered up and kept a sad man happy and engaged in something new and time consuming, from one Canadian to another, thank you BMC.

9:06 "In the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood..."

User error, you can use a hard tool with a slightly rounded edge (paint brush handle, plastic butter knife etc) and flatten the ridges down whilst the plastic is being suctioned still. Usecase: putting together complex shapes for mass production through repeated vacuuforming. Make a cool kitbash terrain piece or building etc, then vacuuform it over and over again, faster and lighter weight than casting and a lot less messy. For instance, nearly all plastic masks and armor costume pieces mass produced and sold in stores are vacuuformed from clay sculpts, wooden lasts or plastic kitbashes

I've used Vacuum Form machines related to my work and one of the things that is often a struggle is the webbing (the stringy ridges you mentioned), depending on the shape it can be very hard to get rid of. Likewise the undercut issue you had with the rocks can be a problem. A way around both at once is to add something underneath roughly the same contour your forming and seal the seam. That area of the formed item gets trimmed off anyways so if webbing forms its a non issue and allows you to feather the transitions of rocks with some kind of filler to eliminate the undercut. The sharper the transitions the higher the webbing risks. On the other parts that did not get good definition, your right Vent holes would solve that problem. They dont have to be big usually, just a way for the air to get sucked out. the deeper the pull the more the material wants to stretch so start with a thicker sheet if you can and expect it to get thinner after forming. Great review, I enjoy your channel and I agree with your review. Great break down and assessment!

For those curious, the track at 5:22 is the instrumental version of Ga$ Money by Xavy Rusan.

Keep up with the vacuform. Once you have played with certain geometries and venting on individual pieces it can do some incredible negatives. It excels in stamping out repeatable shapes or taking glued-together objects to make a solid surface. My real objection is that your model is quite small for terrain. Experiment with heat and other plastics to get some unique features. This tool is really useful, but it shines with larger beds.

back in the 60's Kenner used to make a vacu form kit for making military miniature figures and vehicles. I remember cause I always wanted one

DUDE!! We used big old vacuum formers back when I was in 7th grade!

One potential use for a tool like this might be to take FDM prints of parts and form 'looser' parts from them that'd give you pieces without any printer lines. You could also pre-drill the ventilation holes in the 3D prints before running them off, so your masters would cast a lot sharper. It'd be a way of potentially doing bulk builds of a lot of the same stuff cleanly and quickly. Flatter well ventilated pieces will always vacuform the best. Next up, someone needs to send you some hydro-dipping films.. Would love to see you have some fun with those! :-)

Me and a friend built one once for duplicating 3D printed parts as thin shells for use in making super light weight RC airplane parts.

I really respect the fact you gave an honest, professional review.

Hmmm, maybe it could work as a floor tile and basing material replicator? With your Nurgle army throwing some organic materials or shapes down and getting a sort of creepy, stretched skin over vines and bones look could make for something gross and warp-spawny to work as a backdrop?

You need to put the piece on a relief base to help pull the styrene down to limit the creases, Adam Savage has a good video on vacuum forming you may want to watch.

You are supposed to work in negative. The “good” side is the side where plastic is wrapping around the item on the suction plate. So it is good for moulds and yes you need a lot of suction holes in your master for good result.

Man I would love to play with that machine so much, so many cool projects you could do with that! Cool video :)

A very long time ago 1967 or 1968, I got a Vacuform made by the toy company Mattel for Christmas. I had a blast with it, it came with all kinds of shapes to create your own toys. This before the anti-fun folks got concerned about we children singeing our little fingers. Needless to say I really got excited when I read the title of this video. Mine was a lot less complicated to operate, btw. PS, I made a crap ton of little plastic willy's jeeps.....

Thanks for the video. If you are looking for cheap styrene I buy mine as sheets from plastic distributors. You can get a 4x6’ sheets and at a cost far below hobby costs.

I use one of those for my business. not that model but one that size and its got a bit of a learning curve to it.

In theatre we use large scale vacuum form machines to produce large panels of bricks quickly. Maybe you can figure out a way to miniaturise that tactic

The main use i can see for it it would be making jigs for curving styrene and putting angles in ot eliminating the need to glue or fix corners or bend it by hand, also using it to add a texture to the styrene, bricks, stonewall, paneling etc before cutting it

Adam Savage used to make a lot of space ship models for Star Wars with this tool.

Yeah, I had a feeling you would feel this way about it when I saw you put the video up. Vacuum forming sounds fantastic as an idea. But in practise it takes a lot of set up to prepare a object to be formed. Lots of tiny air holes needed to allow suction for any areas within the piece, lower than its peak. Which is why the tiles and you weren’t fully detailed. Also you need to account for the bevel at the bottom with flush pieces or undercuts with non flush pieces by packing them off the bed with a raft. So the detail covers the entire part not 95% of it. It’s a pain, it can do cool things and saved a project for me at uni. But overall it’s not a very versatile tool in a world of 3D printers. And is only as good as the objects you can make without it.

You’re right about the holes to draw the air through. Also would a negative mould work better as the detail is held better on the side of the styrene that touches the mould?

There is a height limitation at that size machine, as you say those "ridges" are a result of tall things and how the plastic can and can not stretch. With some work to make a nice original you can knock out stuff like mass amounts of crates super quickly, flock/sand and paint and you can fill a table in a day. Someone else mentioned that Adam Savage has a good vid on the pros, cons and usage of vacuforming, highly recommended!

Crazy me, I didn't know these could be bought, I thought they had to be made! I mean I know they have them for industry but I have seen extras of movies where the vacuum table was clearly DIY!

use card stock to build SCI-FI walls and poke small holes for the plastic to grab in the corners and detailed spaces to make perfect molds.

i reccomend tested's videos on vacuum-forming, as well as the one where he talks about the large scale blue wifi radio prop, i cant find a link or a name, but, he mentions a lot of tips in that video as the prop was vacuum-formed for the most part, might help.

This is so nuts. Yesterday I saw that old crashed ship terrain from one of the 3rd edition starter boxes (SM/nids) and I thought to myself, why would you need to use a mold for that, you could totally form it with a vaccuum packer. Heavy plastic is nice, but you can always weigh something like this down. Such a strange coincidence that this video comes out with the exact same idea. Funny world.

The rock mold I think just needed shapes that sat flat on the bed. Maybe glue some foam to the bottom of the rocks to get a seal and something for the sheets to wrap around so you can still get the rocks out. Also, I would think you could make quick, somewhat detailed bases or tiles that would then get covered to increase detail. Or a low detail piece that you then cut away to give it a more detailed interior. I bet if you had primered the foam rock it would have came out, after all the sheets are styrene I would guess. You could also make your own mixing trays and stuff for on the bench.

Wow, I just checked the price on Amazon. $699.oo USD! I think I will pass on Vac Forming for a while. Thanks for trying it out for us.

Love watching you try new things and letting us watch the process. Also, really dig the beats in the montage!

Just realized this thing would be great for damming off bases for resin pours. Put the base with something to form the walls of the dam like a pill bottle with the top cut off. Flip it upside down and vacuuform form it, pull the pill bottle or whatever out and you have a perfect dam that would even catch overflow. Then just tear away

Usually styrene is sold as "HIPS", high impact polystyrene, if you search for that, you might find it. They are usually sold in very big sheets, but the price is really good compared to the small hobby ones that cost a fortune.

This seems like it would be good for battlescape and craters, where debris would be partially obscured and buried in the earth - only top level details are exposed above ground

What about some diamond type grating to make fantastic windows using a clear sheet. (Putting a back wash in all the grooves it makes as the lead work)

Try using MDF as the buck and make sure there are no under cuts. MDF allows air to move thru it pretty well. Fun fact MDF is also used at the spoil /sacrificial board on vacuum tables for CNCs because air can still pass thru it

The more stretch is brought to the foil by height of the object, the more detailed it gets. Maybe try sticking something under the objects.

Make a piller for scatter terrain. Cut in half. Then vacuform the parts. Cut out and glue together. Easy to make a lot of repeatable scatter terrain

Using a larger one at secondary school over 15 years I made a tub about the size of a medium butter tub with none of these issues. I don't know if its just because you spedd up the footage, but it looks like your slamming the plastic sheet down, try doing it a bit slower to give the plastic time to deform and stretch over the former. It could also be to do with the quality of this vacuum former though. Yoghurt pots and butter tubs are made like this and they don't have the creases. If you don't want to waste the plastic sheets from failed attempts, put it on a flat surface and heat it up with a hot air gun (a hairdryer my get hot enough) and it will resume its previous shape, just be carful not to heat it to much and melt it completely.

The first thing I thought of was making inserts for drawers or cases that will hold an arrangement of tools and supplies. Like the vac-formed trays that come with some power tools.

i used a vacuum former all the time back when i worked in a product design workshop. couple of tips for you! -the reason you are getting those ridges running up to your moulds is because you have the plastic too hot. when you see the plastic sagging then its too hot! -i almost never used a timer for heating the plastic. the best way to get it bang on in my experience is to touch it (wear gloves if you can obviously) if the plastic is bouncy but not slack then it is bang on! -a tight seal around the plastic for suction is essential. consider maybe modifying your device with some sealant strips if the seal is lacklustre. the vacuum formers i used were big industrial bad boys with lots of suction and big rubber sealant strips. -strong suction, an airtight seal and even heat is what will give you crispy smooth moulds. -try to avoid using foams for moulding. they can melt under the heat and you'll either get a bad mould or you'll never get the foam out! if you are going to use foam for organic shapes then best thing is to treat it so it is nice and hard on the outside. sculptamould to seal it for example. - consider using a non heat reactive mould releaser for your moulds to get them out at the other end. the best thing to help you in the regard is the right TYPE of moulds. you touched on it in your video in terms of under cuts. similarly, perfectly vertical edges can screw you over so try to get a slight taper on anything you put in it. -the 2 key things these guys are used for is reverse moulds for casting and replicatable, lightweight shapes. for example, these are used a lot for prop making. hollow gun parts for props that can be made in seconds are a very common use for example. -terrain is your key with this. angular geometric shapes like Necron buildings for example would be perfect! -styrene is king for these! don't bother with any other type of plastic!

The scale modelling hobby sometimes makes use of vacformed canopies for model aircraft as they can be made thinner that way than injection moulding can do. They're usually sold by small companies as upgrades to standard injection moulded kits. I've also seen forum threads about people making their own vacform machines for this purpose. Some small companies also sell model aircraft kits where the main components are moulded in vacform sheets, with detail parts often being made in white metal or resin. These are typically seem as fairly challenging to build.

I'd probably use it to package the crafts I make. Just add a cardboard backing and some staples!

You can use your fingers and rubber tools to help push out air on complicated shapes.

hello! I am a dental techician I work with such a machine. When you get those ridges around the model it's because the material is too hot! Try at lower temperature. Also you can increase the suction by using a rubber frame.

I've never used a vac-former but I can see it being good for kitbashing things together into a mold. You know taking some greebles and making an item out of them vac-form it and cast it.

The crafsman did a great video for this same machine

The softer the styrene is as it heats the easier it forms. If you flick it with your finger while it's heating and it is close to hello it's ready. If the surface area of the item is large and covers more of the vacuum surface you need to drill small holes to help with suction of the detail. Also if the item is tall predrilling holes in it too.

I'm impressed a man who actually uses the intstrucions!!! LOL

The beginning of this video is me with any new technology! I tried to play a Nintendo Switch Lite just the other day and I took about 10 photos before I managed to load Tetris...