Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Ghostbusters Ecto Goggles + Vacuum Former Rebuild!

hey everybody adam savage here in my cave  with another one day build and this is a prop   replica it's kind of a prop replica actually  it's not a prop replica because it's a piece   of a prop replica okay ghostbusters ecto goggles  these are the goggles that dan aykroyd wears the   first ghostbusters film uh they are built off of  a pair of old night vision goggles military issue   uh night vision goggles i believe and this is  the correct plastic frame that is the basis   for those goggles now i had one of these cast  in resin and it fell off my shelf it shattered   so i needed a new one rather than by a casting it  turns out a friend of mine had one of the correct   shells and lent it to me and i was going to  make a silicone mold of this i was going to   make a kind of an open slush pour mold that  i could cast in onyx and kind of get that   shell thickness but honestly this thing is  super thin this thing has got to be what   forty thousand seventy seventy thou this  is seventy thousand seventy thousands um   it's very thin casting something like this  is not easy it's done some people do it it   doesn't matter that much if it's a little  extra thick but it becomes a delicate part   as evidenced by the one of mine that shattered  so then i thought self maybe there's a better way   to make this and i looked at it and i realized  well this is actually a a pretty simple shape   i could probably vacuum form it so that is what  i'm going to do i am going to take these goggles   get some b-roll of it so you can understand  the contours and the topography of this   uh thing i am going to take these goggles  i'm going to make what's called a buck   i'm going to make a negative form that perfectly  fits the inside of this that will allow me to pull   it it is just big enough i think to pull on my  mini vacuformer so we'll get to see that whole   process play itself out now to make this  buck i could use a lot of different things   well hell spells margaret i could even uh  tape this up and fill it with plaster and   use the plaster as the buck that's not what  i'm going to do there will be artifacts to   that that will require some cleanup it won't be  a super robust buck so i'm not gonna do that i   am actually going to hand make it out of some  uh effectively foam urethane known as ren shape   this is a expensive model making material that i  i i've used in little chunks in the past um but a   few years ago i got a beautiful cachet of some  heavy duty wrench shape i mean this is like if   you're a model maker and you see this you're like  damn that is that is like an expensive piece of   of urethane but it's awesome so um let's talk  about rent shape for a second ren shape is a   it's a prototyping material it is like i said  it's a urethane uh a petroleum-based plastic um   and it carves very easily if you see i've  got an exacto blade here i can just like   i can just carve chunks so it carbs kind of  like pine you know like a simple pine wood um   the difference between this and pine or  particle board is also a similar weight to   a lightweight particle board mdf or ldf um the  difference between it and those materials is   when you have a particle board you've got a you've  got a surface of the particle board that's great   but as soon as you cut the edges those edges they  soak up paint they soak up they need finishing   this is monolithically uniform so no matter where  i cut it is going to have the same grain and same   texture so this is a fantastic modeling material  brand shape is used in industry often when you   set up a cnc machine you want to make sure your  parts right but you don't want to run it in out   of a giant billet of aluminum right off the bat  you run it in wrench if it doesn't dull your tools   for vacuform bucks it's almost dual rigor in  the special effects industry for little tiny   detail parts there are a few other materials  that are as much fun to work with as this   and if you work for an architectural modeling  firm sometimes you can get scraps of this out   of the dumpster us model makers at ilm used  to pull little scraps out of ilm's dumpster   or garbage can all the time so i'm going  to take this giant chunk of rent shape and i am going to make myself yeah  i've got just enough room i'm going   to make myself a buck that is  the exact shape of this thing so do so here's where we're at we uh   we've taken all the measurements that we can we've  made all the modifications we can and i think that   i have successfully created the correct topography  to obtain the shape that i want and around   that business and once i have that then i'm  gonna super glue all of these pieces together   uh and then they will be my vacuform buck  so if everything goes right i should be we   should be able to pull this vacuum in a few solid  minutes yeah no it's that fast there's a thing there's a thing since i'm going to be pulling yeah since i'm going to be pulling a vacuform i'm  going to end up drilling some little holes around   in here in order to allow the vacuum to pull  the plastic into the cracks there that's really   important to me um however i'll need to like mill  out a manifold down here in order to accommodate   it so that's what i'm going to do right now i'm  going to just do some milling and shaping and   gluing to get this all together here is what i  started with this is what i wanted to replicate a   thin plastic shell for my ghostbusters ecto  goggles and this is the buck that i have made   and when i pull hot plastic over it should give  me this shape i have done some things to allow   the air to move better i've drilled holes in  the corners here that should allow the vacuum   to pull the plastic into the corners i've done  a little bit more of that here and there um we   will see sometimes you have to modify a buck after  you utilize it you gotta try a couple things out   i am also gonna pull out some  talcum powder which is like a   talcum powder acts as a lubricant for these  bucks so i'm gonna bring the vacuform over here right uh actually it looks like i pulled  this thing apart to do some work on it   so you need to do some work to get  it back up and running here we go we are almost ready to vacuform i've got a  piece of black styrene i've got my frame i had a   i had a metal frame for  holding my vacuum forming and   it's gone now it's not gone i'm just not sure  exactly where the hell it is and the reason   i don't know where it is is because i  was planning on rebuilding it so that   may end up being something that i do but for  right now i'm going to put this piece of oh right now i'm going to put this piece of plastic  into this frame and screw it down uh and that   would be enough the the real trick with vacuum  forming is that you want your frame to be holding   on i know this is a freaking disaster but it  should actually work it should actually work   uh just gotta go gingerly we're gonna get one pull  out of this before i have to rebuild the vacuform   table but i will okay so this was a quick and  dirty fix a while back um oh we're doing it again yep there we go that's good um  i'm gonna go here yep all right this is uh this is touch and go i'm  improvising because i don't have exact   i didn't know my back performer wasn't  ready for prime time the thing is is that   i have this lovely little vacuformer and i'm  very proud of it i'm very vacuum forming proud   um but it's um it's not a complicated science  the science of vacuum forming and in fact   if you go on youtube you'll find people who built  their own vacuformers and done really respectable   vacuum forming in their house for pennies on the  dollar like a very very low cost kind of execution um with uh lovely results the fact is  vacuum forming yields a product that   few other inexpensive processes can yield uh  and it's one that i've been in love with since   the beginning of model making of model making uh  actually i think the first vacuum former i used   was in mr benton's art class at sleepy hollow high  school uh and we were using it to make chocolate   molds to make our own chocolate bars yeah high  school art class man that is that is an awesome   thing to partake in okay so i've got my frame  it's well mounted all the way around um it is   let's see magnus i need some extra magnets on here  to hold it up industrial vacuum machines do this   all they do this all automatically the vacuum  former is composed of two parts a heater up here   radiating heat down a vacuum down  here sucking the hot plastic down   all you need is a piece of plastic and a buck  here is my buck oh also everything you're working   with actually let me just make sure that  this fits over this yup it does okay every yeah you want to check all your parameters  that's really really important oh talcum powder cornstarch cornstarch works great  cornstarch is also like a dry lube for um   for vacuforming cornstarch also works great in  mold making it tends to allow plastic to wick   into the smaller parts um of your molds  i might have covered that factoid before   now this is going to get a little powdery when  i pull on the vacuum form but it will also allow   some slippage of the plastic which should help us  tremendously ah this is hot so when the plastic   comes down you're gonna wanna use your fingers  to like massage it into place don't because   you'll burn them all right uh i think it's time  to heat up our plastic so turning on the heater if you could see up in here i've stretched  some uh kiln wire across and basically just   shorting it out in order to create a heater i  think it's a night chrome i'm not sure actually   damn this is a dusty piece i i i think  very soon we're going to have to rebuild   rebuild this and make it a little more usable  because i can't be screwing 40 screws every   time i want to do a vacuum form um something to  note the first thing that happens with plastic   is it bows upwards and that's because you're  heating the top layer the top of your hand and   those molecules get farther apart and as they get  farther apart they push the molecules to still   cool molecules underneath them and they create  the sort of dome so that's the first thing that   happens then it starts to buckle here you can see  now it's it's semi-soft it's not really that soft   and you'll notice it start to you'll notice  yeah and the reflection here you'll notice   it start to even out yeah there we go okay now  we're on the downward journey and the trick is   you want the um you want the  amount of droop that you get   come on there we go you want the amount of  droop here that you get to be somewhat close   to this somewhat close to the the height of  your buck that is a kind of a rule of thumb   that's the one i was taught sometimes i follow  it sometimes i don't now you can see the yeah   the plastic's getting soft the smell of heating  styrene very lovely smell it smells like work to   me it smells like it's the smell of special  effects honestly uh when we were doing uh   there's a episode of star wars insider that  tori belechi and i are in um and it's oh yeah   so i guess i've got some dust in there that's  burning a little bit okay i'm gonna get ready   to pull this because i think my wood's heating and  burning okay here we go uh turning off the heater yeah not bad all right i think i got time for one more  we'll do one more um but that was highly successful so there you have the  pulled vacuum form my only issue is i had a   big web over here now there is a way to deal with  that and i'm going to implement a second vacuum   form and deal with that um it is also you can get  that away and paint it and get get it out of your   persuasion that's certainly peaceful one of the  things about vacuum forming is that you want to   be able to get your your piece back out of the  plastic so i'm just going to slice this open this styrene is an 0-40 styrene not a  not a 075 or o80 like the actual piece   i think i have some of that but this is  we're just doing some test pulls here   now in order to get this off the buck it's  always really good for your big planes to   have a draft angle so it's not perfectly vertical  it's actually got a little bit of a draft to it   that draft exists hell's bells are in all  sorts of injection molded products too because uh that helps with injection molding as well  oh it's quite thin all right but still one   let's see yep it's coming out and the  draft angle oh man i can't even tell   you i've broken bucks pulling them  out of the plastic yeah i actually i'm pretty chuffed about this  i think i let it droop too much   however let's do a little bit of trimming just slicing the inside pull that out oh yeah that nose got real thin okay so just to reiterate here with vacuum forming   here is the original this is what i was hoping to  replicate and here is my vacuum form you can see   how how quickly it gave me almost exactly  the shape that i wanted it is topographically   really really close and it fits me and i i have  to say okay so i can see that i haven't gotten   that curve so i've gotta i've gotta radius that  edge yeah i can see that but that is i'm really   really chuffed with that it is a very  very respectable first attempt uh and   i'm gonna get some thicker plastic i'll  get this going it is a new day uh i am   uh still super am still super excited about how my  uh ghostbusters uh ecto goggles vacuum formed buck   work seriously i'm like stoked to hell about it  this the the comparison between these two things   it is very satisfied it's excellent excellent work  this is a little thin and this this will not work   um so it's time to talk about the vacuum form  machine um this is a machine i built you can   see it's first signed the vacuum suck um the  first vacuum for machine that i ever used was   in the employ of chico mcmurtry who was uh  chico is an amazing artist with the morphic   robot works there out of red hook brooklyn right  now but in the early 90s chico had a shop down   in yosemite street in san francisco and i lived  in that building and i worked for chico as an   assistant for a couple actually uh the better part  of two two and a half years uh and we've remained   great friends ever since but tico had a vacufar  machine called the vacuu-suck and i was using it   to make things like bicycle helmet props for dance  shows and i've covered that i've talked about that   before and tested but my mentor in model making  at the time mitch romanowski had this beautiful   uh red vacuum form machine um and i think it's  literally like the product's name was vacuum   form right and these are these are impossible to  find they are rare as hen's teeth if you've got   one and you want to sell it to me please reach out  i'd like to know um but back in the in the in the   in the late 90s now yeah in the late 90s i was  working at ilm uh and i was building my own little   shop i was starting to do freelance work out of my  shop on bartlett street here in the mission and i   needed a vacuum former and i was talking to fond  davis about it of faunco down in la and at the   same time fawn was living over uh not far from me  uh in not the excelsior but crocker amazon i think   and fawn was also building a little shop so the  two of us were building our little personal shops   and our own little businesses and brands together  and we both built vacuum formers at the same time   i'm gonna try to get fawn to send me a picture of  his because i think he still has it um and this is   basically this is a wooden box inside of which is  the motor for a shop vac on top of which is some   perforated steel plate and then uh that's that  does the vacuum of the vacuum forming and then the   forming is done by this heating element here which  is basically just some kiln wire stretched between   ceramic elements and then powered at 120 volts  and this heats up enough to evenly heat plastic and this has served me well for nyan  20 plus years but i have always had   some issues with it i've always had ways  i wanted to make it a little bit better   and i'm going to do some of those today and the  very first one the most the most complicated   part of a vacuum form machine is holding on to the  plastic um if we take a look at this wooden frame   that got me through the first vacuform yesterday  but won't last any longer um what you can see is   that i'm grabbing the plastic all the way around  the perimeter with an equal pressure being able   to do that with a hinged frame requires a little  bit of finesse in the engineering of that because   you don't want your plastic pulling away from the  frame during the form that'll ruin everything so   i'm about to rebuild the clamp frame for this  vacuum machine using this beautiful half-inch   steel square tube that i've got a whole bunch  of i know that was a really long story but it   was important to give you the context for this for  this great machine i'm super fond of this machine   um we're gonna turn it into a nice bit of kit  today because the small tools they need love too okay i know i said i was working on the frame  and then i set up a time lapse and i started   doing everything but the frame but that's because  i came up with a new priority as soon as i started   to take this machine apart the first thing i did  was i took everything off the main case structure   so i've got a wooden box here with a steel frame  for supports going to this other steel frame i   just spent a bunch of time making sure that this  was level and square to itself and solid and good   then i took off the motor which as you can see  this is a shopvac motor that's the top of an old   shop vac i had and i modified a piece of plumbing  pipe there to be the intake um i don't know why i   just showed you that upside down so i have some  work to do on this plate and here before i build   the frame because i just want to get that right  and then i also pulled out the heating element so   here's the heating element you can really see the  structure of what i did i used some 440 all thread   to support these ceramic rods that are running  across three spots and then i ran some kiln wire a specific i think that back when i did this   i specifically chose a certain amount of  kiln wire to get to a certain temperature   at 120 volts there's no variac on  this you turn it on and this just   you turn it on and this just glows and it  heats up the plastic so i'm loath to change   it it's been working for 20 plus years uh but i  am going to refine it and make it just a little   more robust and a little less jank um yeah so  um i'm gonna get the heating element wrapped   up here then i'm gonna figure out its proper  attachment to this guy because i still think   i can make it a little bit better and then yeah  and we'll move on and we'll we'll go from there do heating element is in i've included a wire  travel for the back so i've got two uh high   temperature lamp cords going in and connecting  up to the heating elements on both sides   uh this is all stretched out nicely i've  added in some angle iron to keep the   insulation in place i have reattached  the plumber's tape connection and now um   now now i'm about to run a test so we're gonna  do a um hold on i'm sorry so now we're gonna   do a test i'm just gonna uh connect up uh i'm  gonna connect this up to house mains and we're   just gonna take a look and see if anything burns  that we don't want to burn because we're going   to be running this a lot and we want to make sure  it's robust so i'm going to this is not plugged in okay so that that's insulated that's insulated that's  insulated all right um yeah we should get this all right here's home i feel it drooping it is all  heating up red hot you know we've got a little bit   of smoke here that's fine it's gonna take a minute  to burn off some of the to try this yeah and take   a look yes you do there you go see that all  right so uh yeah oh a little bit of smoke there let that um let that play itself out let's  just see and make sure that we're happy with   oh it's functioning i don't like how dim that  one is there just means that it's not an even   heat but that might not be mission critical all  right i think i can move that one closer out there   but for the most part i think it's right clearly these are  better when they're touching the padding   so i'm going to endeavor to get them all to be  touching the padding a little bit better but we   can now dismantle that and now this is a safe  device so i'm going to undo these wire nuts and   take these off and that is the heating element  sorted sort of um okay so now and i'm really   like i really like this i've got this nice neat  travel down the side everything is insulated   away there's nothing to catch on anything we  have power coming in we have power coming down   now it's time to start to work on the  plate so i'm going to move this down here and this will be this is my platform   see what i did here i took a plate of aluminum  and bent it at a right angle all the way down   i think is that what i did oh no i had long  angle long thin angle iron and i cut it into   a square and then i sealed it into this right  so that's the vacuum intake this is the edge of   my perforated plate there's a couple things i want  to do here one is i want to even out and make this   plane super flat that's one two is i wanna add a  couple of cross braces this way and one this way   to help support the table because my table droops  a little bit in the middle and i just i i think   i get i think i would get better forms overall  if i didn't have that then it's time to attach   the uh the outer perforated plate to this guy i'm  still using the same piece of perforated plate   i bought almost 30 years ago um and the vacuum  seems to work great um still works great pulled   a beautiful form yesterday i don't think i need  to increase the exhaust inside the machine at all   i have these two long these two long slots  here at the bottom and that's to allow for effectively the vacuum to exhale  and i think i did the math on those   i think when i built this 25 22 years ago i  think what i did was um i actually calculated   the opening that air was intake and i spread that  out to the two slots so they have the same square   area as the intake which means they  have all the outtake that they need   out go as it were all right so um i'm gonna take  this over to my disc sander and do some work on it so i have my three pieces of aluminum one is  gonna sit this way upright and i'm gonna   bend its corner so it attaches into this  piece and then these two will cross it   and they'll be tabbed and slotted together to  provide extra upright support and then i'm going   to drill some holes in the sides here so that  air can move freely among all of this area yeah   that should provide a much  more flat surface for me here is the three supports you see how they're  tabbed and slotted together i have not yet   riveted them here uh what i'm going to do i  actually don't mind the clearance underneath   those that should help the air move around a  bit but i don't want to put all my eggs in that   basket so i'm going to drill a couple of relief  holes in each of these spars except for this one   and that should get me the air  movement that i so desperately need just doing one in the center and then  splitting the difference on both sides and these aluminum pieces i'm using these aluminum pieces i'm using they're  just hardware store flat bar whatever that   ridiculous alloy they use is that's what i'm using all right uh the reason that i'm ending up doing  all this work before i even got to the clamp frame   is the fitment of the clamp frame is all  important uh i don't want to make it too small   and i wasn't sure if i was going  to change too many parameters   so taking care of all of this stuff before i go on  to make the thing that fits over this it's just a   proper order of operations but as you can see i've  now got a nice spine up the middle and two extra   supports i've drilled some relief holes so air can  move around there the next step is for me to take   this you can still see me right  oh neat oh wow that's cool   this is called perf plate it's perforated plate  um back in the day in the 90s you could walk over   to a sheet metal shop down on king street which is  now like super fancy neighborhood but back in the   early aughts it was just in no man's land you  could walk into a sheet metal shop and say hey   could i look through your scrap pile and be  like sure and you'd go like hey could i have   this for like four bucks no like absolutely  and you go now those days are gone those days   yeah those days are so gone but uh this is  the original piece of perforated plate you   can see how like potato chippy it is i'm going to  spend some time kind of bringing this back into   submission and then i'm going to attach it to this  and then we'll be able to make or don't you fall   our clamp frame i started working on this and  then i thought is it possible that i don't have   any more perforated plate i mean i try and keep  a certain amount in stock so i went looking   and i found this which is oh wow  here you go here there's that hi uh so what i've got here is a beautiful virgin  piece of perfplate and i am going to make this   my new plate rather than try and get this potato  chip thing to behave i'll just put this in stock   i can use it for other things later and i'll  make my new plate my new platform out of that do now you may have the legitimate question of why  was my first platform for irvine vacuformer so uh   and part of it was because i had just one of  those hand metal breaks the one you saw me using   to bend the crossbars and so i had to bend this  thing piecemeal all the way around with pliers   and hammer and get and that's just a recipe  for not a perfectly flat piece of metal but   in the interim 30 years since i made this 20  years i've got this lovely 24 inch metal break   let's talk about what a metal break is it is a  machine for making creases in metal over long   expanses so these are used by hvac people to make  ducting in your ceiling um they're used by metal   workers the world over they usually come quite  large three four six feet long finding small ones   like 24 inches and i've got one that's uh i think  i've got even a smaller one somewhere around here   they're hard to find little baby breaks  are actually hard to find a 12 inch one is   just one of my holy grails so i've cut my corners  out and now i'm going to make bends across these   four lines and start to uh manipulate my piece  so the first thing that you do is you clamp in   your piece where you want the bend the the bend  to happen and because i have these corners cut   out i've got them uh delineated and  then you simply bring up the bottom yeah there you go there is a perfectly smooth bend   yes see isn't that lovely i really dig  that okay i'm gonna do the second one again   i wish someone made a reliable 12-inch  metal break because honestly every maker   should have a little 12-inch shear and a little  12-inch break i've got bigger shears i've got   i actually have a six inch here that is just  primo okay so this is clamped in add this up center make sure yep okay and then all right right right right right finger break  and i gotta make the finger break work um   am i gonna yeah i had to make an adjustment i i  had to get a tool and alana to make an adjustment   uh this is what's called a finger break and the  reason it's called a finger break is because it   has the the pieces with which it clamps down on  the metal are actually adjustable and movable   so finger break is necessary when you're doing  box construction so i have both sides here   bent up if i bend this third side i clamp it  down i won't be able to bend it past like there   right because this is in the way with a finger  break you can set the fingers so that they split   and occupy those corners and you can get them  out of the way so you can make that full bent   it'll be a lot clearer when i show it but  what i got to do is adjust the fingers so in there this one here and i'm going  to expand it out just a tiny bit this is tightened down ready for the clamping  one more tight i'm going to clip this piece of   metal in here and show you on camera what i  speak of so now you can see my finger break   is adjusted to span the width of the inside  of my platen and because it's on the inside   of these two upturned sides when this  bends up it will clear the sides of this beautiful look look look look at that look at that   it's almost like i know what i'm doing do the same  on the other side clamping force bending force g force we have our beautiful flat  platen we're gonna put it in place all right ah that is great there is a risk  when you do something like this that it will   not fit perfectly once you're all done  and that has certainly happened to me how do you make sure that it fits  perfectly well look it's about measuring   it's about making sure you've measured carefully  and then it's also about the institutional   knowledge that you have of your device of how  it functions and how you will utilize it yeah   those are just the uh those are just the facts  of making these things work time to attach and   we're gonna do that with some pop rivets and  i'm gonna do it the same way i did it before   which is to say um i'm going to  do it with a hole in the center of each of the four sides and that worked great for years one uh i could use more rivets to  hold this on but i don't need them   and i want to take this apart again maybe  it'll be 20 years before i take it apart again   but i will so i want to make sure that i can  all right let's uh let's just do a little bit and there you have a oh look at that i've wanted  i've wanted i've wanted this platform for my   vacuum former forever all right we are close to  building the frame so let's do some rough assembly   and let's do an operational check and i'm changing  out how we switch this thing because i had a much   better idea in the past on the first iteration of  this machine i had two switches one for the heater   and one for the vacuum now the heater as you can  imagine draws a lot of power so there was always   this operation where i turned on the heater and  then i turned off the heater to turn on the vacuum yeah if you don't do that you immediately blow  a fuse and then you've got a vacuum you're not   pulling and you've just wasted a piece of plastic  and some time so i am replacing these two switches   with one i've got here what's called a double  pole double throw three position switch um this   should allow me to have two connections for the  heater a neutral position in which nothing's on   and two connections for the vacuum so one switch  i can't turn one on without turning the other off   yeah that uh i think that and i think i'll add  a master power switch and then once i have that   then i've got a uh a reliable  machine one you can't screw up   it is impossible to make things foolproof  because fools are so ingenious i that's not   my quote i got that from a book many many  years ago i want to double check operation   on this so i'm just going to pull out audible  continuity and double check the switch connections   great opposite opposite this is  exactly what i thought perfect   one two three four i'm gonna put some uh let's see  the switch i've got has these spades so i'm going   to use the spade plugs no not the red i think it's  going to be the blue yeah it's going to be cool my biggest problem with wiring is i always  clean up too soon i clean up too far before   the system's checked and then i have to undo  everything and redo everything okay so that is   that side and now i'm going to connect this up to  my wireless here great okay so we now should have   enough infrastructure here to do a full switched  systems check it goes to ground okay that's power so this switch allows me to utilize to power and  utilize and separate two completely different   circuits um okay so i guess there is operation  i'm going to plug it in and see if anything sparks   i know that's not the standard protocol  there we go all right nothing has sparked okay nothing i'm not getting anything  okay so i've done something wrong   what have i done wrong i've got power coming in i probably don't have it um i probably don't have this set up correctly  let me just double check the suite   ah all right i did have it  wrong okay so i'm unplugged it's just those two that one does not figure in   okay so let's just double check let's  put that into neutral plug this in there we go so uh power power's off power should be on there goes  the vacuum v okay so i'm going to mark that v and the heating element let's try that and i hear it and when i turn that off i get nothing hey we  have perfect operation so i'm gonna unplug this   excellent and now that it's unplugged i can feed  that through there oh you know what i want to do   i have one more thing i this thing makes too much  noise i'm gonna get some foam and stick it inside i have now lined the inside of the box with some  soundproofing foam so the vacuum shouldn't be   quite as noisy i've used a t50 stapler to hold  the foam in place i've got my switches faced   threaded out through the front i've laid down  some vhb very high bond redheaded tape here   and i'm about to put this on and test operation  once we have that well then it's time to do the   thing that i thought would be the total  of today's operation building the frame   but that is going to take the rest of  the day it's already like two o'clock   and that's going to be like a probably a two  solid hour operation all right here we go i think we're uh i think we're there actually  i think we're there um here is my frame its   construction is relatively straightforward half  inch i think 32 000 uh wall square tube the hinge   is put on with rivets instead of welded uh that  gives me some adjustability um one of the tricks   about a frame like this is it's got to hold it's  got to hold a piece of plastic like this perfectly all the way around the perimeter and so what you  want to do is you kind of want to pre-load it   so i attached these hinges so they were slightly  less far apart than two layers of the foam i've   got lining these jaws the foam helps to hold on to  the plastic and then when i put a piece of plastic   in here it should allow me a really nice amount  of clampage between these two duct build clamps   there are a million ways to clamp a vacuform  frame um there's no need to get fancy this   little duckbill works just great i'm just going  to clamp on that and that'll hold everything   so we also i also laid down a layer of rubber  here around the perimeter so in every way   when i put a piece of plastic in here  hang on oh that's some thicker styrene   i put a piece of plastic in here and grab onto  it like that and then i bring that up there   and now i'm making some vacuums wow i  actually put too many magnets up there okay   so i think i can go with half the mags  i think i can go with half the magnitude let's see here i'm going to crack these in half   nope that doesn't work i thought i'd be able to  smack him yeah neodymium very strong very brittle let's oh yep i'm trying to bring it down and still   i feel like i can use a little less hold down  pressure that's impressive okay at any rate i think we can pull a form heat starting to happen okay get a buck in there get some cornstarch going out heating element is heating up fairly evenly   okay that's that's a good  sign oh i need to get gloves or sensitivity i really like these tig welding  gloves lincoln makes these tilden makes them all   right so you can see under here the same thing i  was talking about before the plastic is wrinkling   and now straightening out as it's heating and  being uniform yeah can you see the heating yeah   you can see the heating elements in there yeah  they're all nice and red glowy glowy it's great i'm not sure i'm going to let it get as far as  i let the last one get one of the reasons you   get webbing is if you have too much droop it's  got to go somewhere so i'm actually going to try   less webbing this time sorry less droop to see  if i can't take care of that webbing problem i   have other techniques that i can use to also get  rid of that you know the foam liner that i use   to uh hold in the uh the plastic it is basically  just an eighth inch neoprene self stick neoprene   on a roll i bought this on amazon um this  is a uh this is a thicker neoprene this is   a rubber sheet adhesive this is uh also a foam  neoprene i'm using that for the base around here   and they wear out make sure make no mistake  those rubber gaskets wear out you got to   remake them every every few months every you  know 40 50 vacuum forms something like that   all right we're getting some good droop i kind  of want to try it yeah let's do it all right okay here we go uh we're going to go so  now remember i've got this one switch all   i have to do is pop it down and all of a  sudden the vacuum is on so i'm going to go   down like this over and the vacuum is on  and okay still a little too much webbing but that's awesome i'm gonna cool it down now turn the main power off and clamp it it  pops right out it's ready to go again   this is this is great i'm super super happy  with this um i'm gonna try another one i'm   not gonna start heating it up right away  but i am going to get another one loaded   so that i can do this again once i have  this one cut out because there we go nice um   because i want to try even less fruit than that  there are a bunch of ways to cut out a vacuum form   you can run it on the bandsaw but that noise is  really horrific i mean it's kind of sometimes the   only way you can do it really um but i like to use  the x-acto blade because the sound of the bandsaw   cutting through thin vacuum styling is like it  will that way lies madness it might make you   totally crazy when you vacuum you end up with a  lot of this crap plastic you don't need anymore sometimes you have to cut a form to get it off the  bug and then you just glue it back together or you   back it with a little extra styrene around the  fix it's moving it's separating ever so slightly   yup and it's just it's patience really  everybody who has to do this for the   movies will tell you it's just about  patience and then you get nice forms out   look at that okay so i got four webs there  there there and there and i don't want them   uh the thickness around the nose is  better on this one so less droop is great   but i have another technique for getting rid of  some of those so give me a sec this here is my   solution for getting rid of the webs uh it's  basically a shape i put down you'll see how i   do it when i'm actually executing the vacuum  form i put this shape down and it effectively   so what happens is i'm getting webs here and here  there and there because there's too much material   it doesn't have anywhere to go so what you can do  when you have that is you can make a a box that   pushes down on the pushes down on the plastic  and sort of pre-stretches it so you've actually   removed some from the equation i still want to  pull out a little bit more yeah it's up there so vacuum forming is used in industry to make  packaging for toys and products uh and you've   seen vacuum form packaging uh and vacuum form  when you do it in a in a factory setting they use   these things all the time these pre-stretchers  and helpers for uh for forming in fact sometimes   there's even an under buck and an over  buck to help place the plastic over   the underbuck i don't know that's called an  underbook but you know you know what i mean turn on the heat really should have a light here   but that'll be a later iteration i'll get a light  on that tells me that this thing is powered up main power is on heater's heating getting this the central message here is  that every vacuform is a little bit different   uh it's never trivial to get it all working  i wouldn't keep watching my hair fly away get my hair cut soon plastic as you can see is  bowing up the way i said it does i feel like   i kind of want to try this just it's literally  like half an inch past the bottom of the frame don't really want to try this yeah i  really do i do i think i want to try it   okay see this is also where  i've got three things going on   drop that put this on turn the thing on and  i don't want it to last too long i don't want   to take too long to do it this is where having  an extra set of hands helps but coved so no go all right here we go let's try it down like that still got a little bit of webbing but much less that was an improvement that was  an improvement oh that's gross   that is uh some artifact of some  of the cornstarch there i think   all right let's cut this out let's  try another one i have some abs here abs tends to stretch a little less which makes  it kind of a pain in the ass to use in my opinion   but at the same time it might  be great for this i also yeah i've got this thick abs this this  could be amazing let's try the thick abs fun i hope you're watching this i hope you've  uh taken this trip down memory lane with me   um if you have i oh crap ah so okay this happens  um i'm using plastic that's a little too it's a   little thinner i've got this i got tons of this  stuff i've got like oh 40 and 0.60 and really i   should be running this out of 80 000 or more um so  i have a crack up the side here wait where is it   there it is i have this crack up  the side that'll make it easier   to get this out of the to get the buck out of  the form and like i said sometimes you make a   cut just like that in order to facilitate  the release and it really styrene is so uh   it's so global and so sandable and so workable  with weld on and with cyanoacrylic glue   yeah i went way too far in the cornstarch there  showed up anyway um that's an easy repair to make   you simply add some styrene on the back  side then you take a a sanding stick and   sand that down those webs disappear pretty  fast all right let's start heating up this abs i i don't work with  abs a lot i have found it to be   consterningly uh peculiar  to work with but i really this this was a important piece of my  employment back in the in the early   offs when i was doing freelance work  and every time i saw the droop of my   of my platform i wanted to add in those spins  and never got around to it so it's really nice to   to do that right now yeah i guess with a texture i  guess you could call this 80 thousand i don't know   uh any the texture here it's got a texture  on one side and it's shiny on the other uh   a lot of times the texture hides crimes right it  makes bad details disappear to a certain extent   i am still running the texture on the inside here  which coincidentally should make it a lot easier   to remove from perform once i'm all  done plastic's getting soft er soft er   soft er yeah what's nice is that the heating  element was not heating up uniformly but that's   because some of it was touching the uh uh  the fireproof backing and some of it wasn't   and stuff that was touching was getting its  radiation radiated back on itself so it was more   powerful but now that i've got it in sort of this  hot box well now it is heating up really nicely   the thing is that it takes a long time to heat  which means i'm also kind of melting the things   that are holding on to it this is the whole thing  uh one thing that i like about my vacuum performer   is that this doesn't get too hot it gets hot but  not not too scaldingly hot the heating element   is always going to be one of the more difficult  parts of vacuum forming but actually to be honest   if you want to seriously try some vacuum forming  go onto youtube there are people who have done   magnificently beautiful costumes using a vacuum  former that is a garbage can lined with tin foil   with a space heater at the bottom and a wooden  box with a vacuum inlet for your shop vac or your   house vacuum um the amount of pressure you need to  make a vacuum for work is very small overall it's   what is this probably like one and a half psi but  across the whole form that's like many many pounds   yeah abs man i just it's not heating it's not it's not moving uniformly  i've got this sort of weird   cleft back here where it's not perfectly  heated and this is my experience with abs   is that as it moves away from the heater and now  i'm starting to smoke see i'm not sure i love this   everything's starting to smoke this could be just  the dust it's burning off the top but i kind of   ah all right i think we're gonna give this  a shot let's see if i can pull it down yep oh that is ugly as hell this is why you want gloves because it's still  soft around here and i'm helping it get into   all the corners it's not giving me a good vacuum  though i mean i guess one could salvage a format here we go that was okay that's just override i mean it's  heavy duty that's something i do like about it   oh okay here's the thing when you have a big  heavy piece of plastic sometimes it makes it   much easier to pull the buck out this  whole thing just creeped on me and   told me by that creaking that  it's going to release that's neat yeah i guess yeah somebody  could make something for that i don't want to try abs anymore i don't like abs heating up that was great so uh for the record this is the  hero and correct shell part for ghostbusters ecto   goggles and this is what i made after about uh  three hours of labor by using this red shaped buck   and pulling hot plastic over it now you should  know if you don't have access to rent shape   ldf what's often called true pan or low density  fiberboard is not only a sustainable growth   product it has no formaldehyde in it which is  great for certain shops uh and it can do bucks   all day long it's great for bucks uh mdf and ldf  are both fantastic for making vacuum floor bucks   and i've made hundreds of them with that stuff  the red shape is the fancy fancy stuff uh but   deuteronomy i'm um i'm really that is a  highly respectable bit of kit now i may   end up oh right how did i fix the webbing i  wanted to talk about that so i had a web here   and as you can see i still have a  little sanding to do but the web is gone   so what i do is when i pull the form off  the buck i've got a little crease in the   back where the webbing where the inside of the  webbing is i fill that with cyanoacrylate glue there we go i fill the backing with ca glue and  then i dribble on a little bit of baking soda   baking soda is an insta kick for ca glue um  you can use activator accelerator like this   or you can use zip kicker  cigarette smoke works but yeah ish baking soda is phenomenal with ca glue because  it adds body so i use it specifically for things   like this where i want some uh i don't want the  brittleness and the the hardness of the acrylic   glue to work itself away from the styrene and the  baking soda helps me make kind of a monolithic   little repair and you can see just how much ca  glue i've put in there to support that and i've   done the same on the other side this is a standard  thing one has to do with vacuum forming uh once   i hit this with a coat of paint you'll never know  you will never ever ever know it is look there are   some people who are great at vacuum forming i am  just like everything else i know i am video credit   uh so i have to learn how to fix things  instead of how to do them right the first time that is great um i i am i am not going to continue  on right this second making uh making uh uh uh   danny aykroyd's ecto goggles but um at  this point i can make several look at that   yeah uh even the very first form is  still quite serviceable except for   this giant web which i've got to take  care of these three are all okay yeah   i i really love that that comparison that  comparison i know these are gold and these are   silver uh i am not even sure what the actual color  of these is supposed to be i think it's black   and maybe you have to pull them off maybe i maybe  i'm forgetting i just wanted to make this look   exactly like that um i haven't gone back into my  ecto goggles reference library which will tell me   which will tell me a lot about the next steps  for this but here we are replicating a piece of   industrial equipment and to boot my beautiful  old vacuum form machine is back up and running again your origins of this vacuum form machine  is that my model making mentor mitch romanowski   who ran the shop for nightmare before christmas  and also for james and the giant peach and was one   of the most um one of the most intuitive modelers  i have ever met that guy was a problem solver par   excellence he had his difficulties don't we all  uh but mitch was an amazing amazing guy to have   as my first real mentor in this industry and  it makes me feel mitch died a few years ago   uh he has survived uh by uh by family and friends  who love him and remember him fondly and this is   my way of remembering him yeah thank you guys for  joining me for this one day build i did not expect   my vacuum for machine to be pristine and up  and running in new shape at the end of this   but uh i'm really pleased with how this went thank  you guys for joining me i'll see you next time   thanks for watching that video if there's a video  equivalent of the clean plate club you're a member   uh if you want to support us one of the  best ways you can do it is going to our   merch store and purchasing one of our beautiful  new posters this is my hand-drawn sketch of uh   my two toolboxes that i used when i was an active  model maker at industrial light and magic in the   late 90s and the early aughts there's also on  the far left side of the poster a list of all   of the tools i had in these tool boxes and  i used them daily for almost a decade again   you can get your own version of this printed on a  beautiful card stock by following the links below

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 803,564

Rating: 4.9230771 out of 5

Keywords: tested, tested adam savage, tested one day builds, adam savage one day builds, adam savage, vacuform diy, vacuum forming, vacuum forming machine, vacuform machine, ecto goggles, diy ghostbusters props, how to make ghostbusters props, ghostbusters prop replica, ecto goggles diy, how to vacuum form plastic, how to vacuum form, ghostbusters goggles diy, how to make ghostbusters goggles, ghostbusters ecto goggles, adam savage ghostbusters, adam savage vacuum forming machine

Id: lsXLGT5N2uo

Length: 77min 54sec (4674 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ShamSham03]

Just watched this. IMHO it seemed 25% of the video was the actual build while 75% was work done to his vacuum forming machine.