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Fab (Why vacuum forming will become popular and important)

 
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drcrash
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Joined: 04 Sep 2006
Posts: 705
Location: Austin, Texas

PostPosted: Tue Oct 24, 2006 8:01 am    Post subject: Fab (Why vacuum forming will become popular and important) Reply with quote

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
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Joined: 30 May 2003
Posts: 2144
Location: Texas, USA

PostPosted: Wed Oct 25, 2006 6:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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Joined: 04 Sep 2006
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Location: Austin, Texas

PostPosted: Sun Oct 29, 2006 1:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 30, 2006 10:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah, sort of like a topographical map, built in layers. Cool idea!
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