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www.TK560.com Vacuum Forming, Movie Prop, Sci-fi and GIjOE Forum
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drcrash Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 705 Location: Austin, Texas
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Posted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 8:01 am Post subject: Fab (Why vacuum forming will become popular and important) |
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This is the kind of thing that first got me interested in vacuum forming.
If you're not familiar with the fab movement and fab labs, check it out.
Quote: | http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/fablab.html?pg=2&topic=fablab&topic_set= |
Some day I plan to get one of those $2000 sign cutters and use it to print out 3D shapes. (You print out a whole bunch of layers of vinyl about a third of a millimeter thick, and stack them up on a couple of aligning pins.) Then you can vacuum form over the resulting buck to make an actual object.
Cool.
To make this affordable, it really helps if a decent vacuum former doesn't cost more than your amazing 3D printer. |
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jegner Site Admin
Joined: 30 May 2003 Posts: 2144 Location: Texas, USA
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Posted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 6:20 am Post subject: |
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3D Stereo Lithography has been around now for about 10 years, but are dang expensive. If they ever get down to an affordable range, you better bet, I'm getting one!
Rapid Prototyping is another name for it, and I've seen these things in action. Dang cool. Not sure how well it would hold up as a vacuum forming buck, but as a prop maker, there are endless possibilities. |
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drcrash Guru
Joined: 04 Sep 2006 Posts: 705 Location: Austin, Texas
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Posted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 1:31 pm Post subject: |
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The sign cutters can cut stronger stuff than vinyl, like ABS or even aluminum or copper. (You could make very strong metal bucks, pre-holed for heating/cooling tubes, even. Wow.)
I'm not sure what that ends up costing for replacing or sharpening the actual cutting parts more often, though.
The high-res laser sintering machines I know about can make parts out of fairly hard plastic, or even fuse metal powder to make metal parts.
(One of the first demos was making a coach's whistle, with a ball inside it. They picked the whistle up out of the metal powder, blew into it to blow the unfused dust out, and then it tweeted properly because the ball was pre-formed and free inside it.)
Those are expensive, though, which is why I'm thinking more about sign machines. (A laser sinterer that can produce non-small parts is very expensive, and slow.) A $2000 sign cutter and a less-than-$1000 vacuum former are within reach of a lot more people, and should plenty to do a lot of very cool things.
For a lot of stuff, where you don't need fine detail or really sharp edges, you could just smooth the 0.3 mm resolution of the buck by vacuum forming a piece of 3mm EVA foam over it.
And for stuff where you need moderate structural strength, you could form the part out of something like 1/4" ABS, put some reinforcing struts inside, and fill in the spaces with an appropriate density of 2-part rigid foam.
You could make fairly strong things like furniture with a good vacuum former, not just lightweight flimsy stuff. Neat. |
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jegner Site Admin
Joined: 30 May 2003 Posts: 2144 Location: Texas, USA
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Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:06 pm Post subject: |
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Ah, sort of like a topographical map, built in layers. Cool idea! |
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