snowpenguin
Frequent Poster
How thick plastic can be easily vacformed? I was thinking of vacforming a laptop case, with reinforcements on the inside and just a casing on the outside.
How thick can you vacform?
- Thread starter snowpenguin
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βeta
ModRetro Legend
Up to a half an inch, from what I've seen done. More is possible.
Bet you didn't expect that.
The thicker you go, the less detail and less drastic curvature you can have.
Go with .08", it's perfectly fine. Use something a little thicker if you really want, it won't cause any trouble.
Bet you didn't expect that.
The thicker you go, the less detail and less drastic curvature you can have.
Go with .08", it's perfectly fine. Use something a little thicker if you really want, it won't cause any trouble.
snowpenguin
Frequent Poster
Well there will be a large flat plane of about 15 X 12 inches, so I want it to be the strongest possible.
It seems vacforming is my only option for this case as any other way is either too boxy or too expensive for me.
I will just need to figure out how exactly I am to heat up a 24" X 24" sheet of .125" plastic.
Any ideas?
It seems vacforming is my only option for this case as any other way is either too boxy or too expensive for me.
I will just need to figure out how exactly I am to heat up a 24" X 24" sheet of .125" plastic.
Any ideas?
snowpenguin
Frequent Poster
My oven is 16" deep lol.
And yours is 18".
I'll probably just cut it down in the end.
And yours is 18".
I'll probably just cut it down in the end.
EnterTheHatrix
Member
Thick plastics tend to get very, very brittle the moment you switch on the vacuum and in some instances can rip apart rather than stretch. You really need to super-heat the plastic and keep it hot when forming as the vacuum will cool it down dramatically. For this reason it's worth sticking to reasonably thin and highly flexible plastics such as high impact polystyrene (HIPS). 0.5mm should be ideal, just make sure you reinforce it (from the sounds of it, you already planned to do this) as HIPS is generally a soft light-weight plastic anyway (which makes it more than ideal for any portable if you're prepared to make a case from scratch rather than buy one)
I use it in all of my builds as it's incredibly easy to work with, hard wearing, dirt cheap, and you can cut it easily with scissors (vs other plastics that either can't be cut with scissors at all, or just shatter or crack when you do so)
I use it in all of my builds as it's incredibly easy to work with, hard wearing, dirt cheap, and you can cut it easily with scissors (vs other plastics that either can't be cut with scissors at all, or just shatter or crack when you do so)
Downing
Well-Known Member
For my heat box, I just took the broil element out of an oven, made a wooden box 24" x 24", and put a plug on the element. The plastic sits on top of the box in it's frame and gets heated from the bottom. Works pretty well! And, black polystyrene from IPS .093 is an excellent thickness for both stregnth and plyablity. Recommend that!
