I've been watching this build thread from the start and I have to say that you have done an incredible job and must have some serious patience. I take my hat off to you sir!! I can't wait to see the final product and hopefully own one. Keep up the amazing work. Living down under (NZ for me) I know how hard it is for us to access the range of materials needed for such a build like this. You are a real credit to the RPF and BTTF community ;P
Thank you. One day I will cross the sea and explore NZ.
I came to the RPF to learn and ultimately, it is all about sharing what you have learned, so why I like to document everything and not just the good stuff. If don't fail, we don't learn, so I think it is important to document this stuff.
It is more the cost of the materials here. I have a found a decent supplier now, but even his prices have almost doubled in the time I started learning about vacuum forming in 2012.
Yeah, I have a few more tweaks to make to the tooling and I think I will have a pretty neat way of duplicating this very cool prop. As I have mentioned, it gets better once I get this vacuum forming silicone blanket as there are no failed pulls ever again. With the blanket, I can reheat under the seal and suction provided by the blanket and form a part that didn't go 100% the first time. Generally, if you do this to a vacuum formed part, you either end up with a blow out (tear) or further warping as the heat undoes the work you just did.
So my goal here was to work out how to make thick, usable plastic parts from vacuum forming instead of the usual paper thin, disposable parts we see in everyday life like food packaging. The tech is 40+ (maybe close to 60 years old?) and I really think that there is so much potential for it. The world has turned to injection molding because of the higher success rate (no failed pulls) and so I wanted to create something that was as reliable with far less set up costs that a DIYer could do. I looked into injection molding back in 2008 and a simple 2 part mold was 10 grand. Add side parts and the price almost doubled. So I needed to be making thousands of parts to just pay off the molds. This is where vacuum forming (short runs) really has potential. In the end, I think I made 150 units and therefore would have run at a massive loss. I ended up using laser cut parts and gluing them. That worked out OK because the parts were flat. The tube bag is curved and so it makes sense that this would be vacuum formed.
I have a pair of the NIKE AIR PRESSURES that came in the clearish plastic shoe box and it appears to have been vacuum formed. I studied the thing and could find no trace of injection spouts (sprews) or ejection pin marks. Yet the thickness of the plastic and the level of detail would suggest injection, but now I am really thinking, female tooled. It is also made from PETG which has exceptional vacuum forming properties.
I really want to make a clear tube bag at some point.
