"Some times I amaze even myself". My May the 4th SW quote for the day.
Well a much better day today that 2 days ago.
So the issue I have faced with this project has been a lack of heat. So today I bought a rig that would make Boba Fett jealous. Heat problem solved! This heat unit can drain that bottle in 20min.
2 days ago I made the new heat box but it was not working with the 3 ring burner. Works a charm now.
The trick is to fire the flame unit into the hot box and aim at the corners but not hot the plastic. It takes just 2min from cold to over 150 degrees C. I destroyed 2 sheets of plastic learning this.
So unlike normal vacuum forming, I can make a seal with cold plastic. I only need a few inched of Hg to do this. Run the timer at 2min, turn on the heat and watch the magic happen.
When I buy more plastic, I am going to have to shoot video because it was super cool to see this working.
So the results are in and I have a list of things I need to fix.
1. Use thicker plastic. The pull is not 100 percent and I had to back off the suction at 25"Hg when it broke my tool. Seriously this thing snapped 16mm MDF. See image 6. It cracked right along the side of the sand/epoxy mix. Unbelievable!
2. Fix the tool. I need to add supports under the sides now. The crack is OK.
3. I also have to make up a new handle part. So I knew at some point that I would have to replace the plastic tool parts of the handle with aluminium. I didn't figure it would have to be done after the first pull.
So over all, pretty happy about this.
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