Bacteria's project - making a vacuum forming table

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 3:23 am

Of course I figured out how to round off corners, used electric sander, however it was going to take forever as the pine was hard, also the inwards curves would need to be done by files, which would take forever (see pic). It was also hard going on my hands.

Got to this point with pine (the blocks were screwed in place at back onto fibreboard) and gave up as inpractical.

There are many materials to make a hard and solid mold from, it is down to personal choice and what you have to hand. Personally, although the clay is quite expensive to buy (I used about Â£8 worth for this mold), it works really well, which is all that matters frankly. The result speaks for itself.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 5:23 am

Surface is completely smooth now. The extra dip in the pic on the bottom side looks off-centre in the pic, however it is absolutely centre in real life; this is just down the the perspective from the camera angle. I spent a while with my electric sander getting the surface smooth, then filled in any minor dips with more clay, when dry, re-sanded. For the sides, used a foam flexible hand sander block; again filled, sanded, filled, sanded.

As the mold is as perfect as it can be now, I will give it a coat of varnish to make sure it doesn't get chipped through handling. Once dry, I will make a case with it.

I made the bottom half of the case mold fairly straight, so it will be far easier to align the bottom section of the case to the top section this way.

Once the case top section is vacuum formed I will resume the PSone portable mod in this forum!

Hopefully this afternoon; if not, definitely tomorrow.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Thu Oct 30, 2008 9:52 am

Final posting on this now:

The vacuum cleaner was destroying the 3mm fibreboard, was literally sucking it out of shape. Replaced with a fresh piece, same thing happened, lost a couple of pieces of plastic due to this.

Replaced the firbreboard with 18mm MDF. There is no way that will bend!

Got a perfect result:

The entire clay mold was completely sucked into the plastic, with a bit of jiggling the clay mold got free easily enough!

Right, time to resume the PSOne project now!!

If I am unlucky and my clay mold ever breaks (eg I drop it), I can always use a finished vacuum case (unused) as a mold for plaster to turn out a new mold!

Registered on the forum here, getting some good interest in my project: forum Also awaiting registration confirmation to go onto TK560 forum too (also specialize in vacuum forming). Learnt a few tricks there while I was doing research for my project, so thought I would post there too.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 8:21 am

Ok, carrying on modifying the casing and the PSone system, in the PlayStation forum here; continuing my old thread, page 2 onwards : here

See you there!!

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:00 am

bacteria wrote:Of course I figured out how to round off corners, used electric sander, however it was going to take forever as the pine was hard, also the inwards curves would need to be done by files, which would take forever (see pic). It was also hard going on my hands.

Got to this point with pine (the blocks were screwed in place at back onto fibreboard) and gave up as inpractical.

There are many materials to make a hard and solid mold from, it is down to personal choice and what you have to hand. Personally, although the clay is quite expensive to buy (I used about Â£8 worth for this mold), it works really well, which is all that matters frankly. The result speaks for itself.

I don't know if you know what a coping saw is, but the term has been thrown around in a few posts now, so I thought I'd show you. It's basically a hand-powered jigsaw. It would have worked perfectly in cutting the pine and you can get one on ebay for super cheap. Even if you don't want to work with the wood in the future (which I really would reccomend, even without strong skills in wood working; it's much easier than you'd think), it's a great tool to add to a case-making toolbox. You'll find loads more uses for it other than cutting shapes in wood

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Fri Oct 31, 2008 10:09 am

Thanks for the link, will stay with clay, but the saw might be useful in the future.