Make your own "kitchen floor" vacuum former
In MAKE Vol. 11, we ran on of my favorite articles to appear in the magazine: a how-to piece on making your own "kitchen floor" vacuum former, which lets you make cool 3D parts out of plastic. The article was written by toy designer Bob Knetzger, who uses his vacuum former to make prototypes of his toys.
In this video, Kipkay shows you how to make the vacuum former. Link
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Oh crap, I thought he was going to make a kitchen floor using a vacuum former.
Fantastic - I've been pondering building one for awhile, but this breaks it down to a nice, easy level (other's I'd looked into were much bigger and more complicated.)
With a couple extra steps about making a copy of his tiki (one that he could put a few strategic holes in - assuming he wasn't willing to put holes in the original to begin with), and the plastic copy would be spot on (no sense bogging down the video with that though.)
I remember someone had a massive how-to on how they made their own storm trooper outfits with a home made rig like this - must be ten years now. Ten years is too long to wait. I'm going to have to try this, asap.
There was a time when I imagined my life as a Father being one happy and project after another. Having grown up without a Father in my life I day deamed about the TV dad coming home to me. The Courtship of Eddie's Father senario of two males bonded together walking laughing and feeding eachother's souls with the nonsence of compaionship. Planning complicated and interesting scientific tasks that would involve the use of crazy everyday materials around the home to make wonderous toys for us to play with together. We ould be so proud of each other. So when I came upon this project I jumped. I gathered my young daughter and son together and with assorted things lying about we journed forth on the bonding mission that task oriented projects accomplish.had my kids making masks for their bionicles out of old zipper folders and milk jugs. Eventually my wife came home and freaked over the melting of plastic in the oven.
Oh my god, thanks for posting this! I had a Mattel VacuForm when I was a kid , and it really spurred my spacial abilities. I made everything I could think of, and I made small objects with clay to custom make anything I could imagine. As I got older into my early teens, I made items for my car models, then used the plastic sheets to make body panels and chopped tops that no Revell or Monogram kit could supply.
In my early 20's I worked at GAF Viewmaster in Beaverton Oregon. Generally not so fun, however, I did occasionally custom mix colors (unauthorized) for viewmasters and would "blow" lexan into my own creations when purging the plastic injection machines.
there must be some way to use this to ingest drugs
I used to work with one of these at my first job as a teenager making novelty license plates. i had precut sheets of colored plastic and i would use magnetic letters on a board as a mold. then after i formed the plate i had paint on these little rollers and i would paint over the raised letters on the plate. often for a dollar more i would make them with colored glitter sheets... so ugly! cheep and cheesy always makes a profit at the mall. i loved the messages on them too, like "$$BIG DADDY & little momma$$" i always thought there must be a better use for something like this. im going to make one this weekend!
His result looks strikingly like the MCP from tron!