Prop: Shop - How to Make a Vacuum Forming Machine

hello everybody and welcome to the prop shop your guide to prop and costume making I'm Bill Doran and today I'm going to show you how to make this adorable little vacuforming machine vacuform machines are extremely handy for props and costumes if you want to make lightweight hollow pieces like a mask or maybe like a shoulder piece or if you want to make multiple copies of something these things are really really great to have they vary in size and design this one's really tiny but you could just scale it up feel free to play fast and loose with this setup this particular design is based on one that Fon Davis did he had a video right there that you ought to go check out very similar to how I did this one he did some little different stuff with the frame so definitely go check that one out in fact if you want to make a really big amazing vacuforming table Fonz got a video over on the Stan Winston school that is worth every single penny I recommend you go check that out both of those resources will be linked below also keep in mind that this can be done for really really cheap if you buy your vacuum and your toaster oven used you can get them really cheap and you can do it with fairly basic tools I would say if you had to you can probably do all of this for under I don't know 50 bucks let's get started first is the frame which I bought all of these pieces at the hardware store and some of them at the office supply store the bulk of the frame is made from aluminum angle pieces these were cut you could use a miter box and a hacksaw to cut them or a bandsaw to cut them at that nice 45-degree angle I cut mine to length so that they would fit inside of the metal tray that comes with my toaster oven and then once I had the pieces all cut out I lined up the corners using a 1-2-3 block and then I could put the angle corner brackets down braces corner braces I can put those down and draw where I need to drill a bunch of holes then I went to mind press of course you could use a handheld drill if you got it and I drilled out the holes for these screws but I also countersunk them on the other side so that the screws I was using could like flush this surface is where it's going to clamp down on your plastic and you don't want your screw heads being proud then I could screw together all of the corners of my frame this left frame that is nice and sturdy of course this needs to be clamped together with another piece for your classic so I made two of them ha you can use your frame to cut out the exact size of your plastic when it comes to vacuum forming and then using some binder clips your plastic gets clamped between your two framed pieces holding it perfectly in place for my setup I also cut a hole out of the tray that goes in the toaster oven so that my frame could fit right in there and then I could slide the whole thing into the toaster oven holding it suspended over the heating element of course if you don't have a setup quite like this you could suspend it a number of different ways you could just use some spring clamps then hold it during the heating process or you can put those 1 2 3 blocks in there and rest your frame on top of it you've got a lot of options being of toasters I need one be right back this is our old toaster we decided it was time to retire it and get a new one whatever toaster you go it's sure you could buy any one but gonna use one from a secondhand store the important thing is once you use plastic in this don't use it for food anymore that's a bad idea the next thing we need is our vacuform table this is just a wooden box with holes in it I made my holes out of pegboard because I had some lying around I just traced it out using my frame because this frame is going to go all the way over it then I cut out my wood pieces using my favorite saw I like my bandsaw whatever saw you got will work just fine when you cut out the side pieces for your vacuform table you want to drill a hole in one of those sides this is for the hoes for your vacuum to go into I used a Forstner bit on my drill press to drill out the hole it was just a little bit small which is good you want it to be snug I use a drum sanding bit on my drill press to widen that hole just a bit again though I want that to be nice and snug to have a nice seal then all my box pieces were assembled you could just wood glue these together with some clamps that would probably hold it just fine or use some screws or nails or in my case nail gun because it's awesome to put the whole thing together and that's it you've got all the pieces you need to start and vacuu forming stuff now there are lots of techniques and materials you can use to make vacuum forming bucks and we'll go into that in a future video but for this one I just grabbed whatever I had laying around like a sanding block why don't I just do a vacuum form pull of that your plastic material gets clamped into your frame for this one I used a thin piece of styrene plastic but you could use PE TG or acrylic or ABS plastic I like the styrene it gets clamped into the frame slid into the toaster and then you turn the toaster on I use the toast setting so that it had heat on the top and bottom and then you wait it shouldn't take too long to heat up your plastic you'll see it start to bow on the bottom you don't want that to touch any of the heating elements but once it does bow significantly it's ready to go put your you form buck on the little table turn on your vacuum then pull out your frame using gloves it's going to be really hot and then press that whole thing right down on your vacuform buck well pull the air out and suction it right down to the surface of your piece then you can let it cool and trim off the extra plastic and pull your plastic off of your vacuform buck this leaves a thin shell that is exactly the outside copy of your original piece and there you go you have successfully vacuum formed a thing there are some considerations to make of course don't use PVC plastic in something like this that's a really bad idea it's really toxic like I said I like styrene and ptg especially if I'm making visors I use the PE TG plastic because it's clear also your back you form buck will heat up because you're putting a hot piece of plastic on it don't use anything that could melt I like using hydrocal for the vacuform bucks that I do normally again we'll dive into that deeper in a future video also try to avoid deep undercuts anywhere that the plastic will have trouble getting pulled off of your model that's it everything you need to know to build up your own vacuforming machine thanks for checking out the video you guys we have some projects coming up that will utilize this here so make sure you subscribe and you will not miss them also of course check out some of our other prop and costume making videos there's a whole bunch of them in there we're almost at like 300 videos so dive in there and check them out of course if you make your own vacuforming machine I want to know about it so let me know in the comments down below or yell at me on twitter that's at chin beard oh I gotta go

Channel: Punished Props Academy

Views: 1,756,213

Keywords: vacuform, vacuum former, vacuum form machine, small vacuum form, how to make a vacuum former, vacuform machine, build a vacuum former, vacuform table, prop making, vacuform mask, bill doran, punished props, chinbeard, vacuum, plastic, cosplay, costume, hollow, cheap, quick, how to, tutorial, punished props academy, props, maker, build, prop making tools, DIY, easy build, easy to make, quick build

Id: Gx66mS7U2vY

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 23 2015