I’ve seen a few small vacuum formers, most notably the peanut butter jar vacuum former and some small ones over on Kickstarter, but this one by odemir_atelier seems particularly small, cute, and well put together. It’s basically an attachment for a vacuum hose/handled vacuum and a frame for a sheet of plastic. Apply heat with a heat gun, then lower the plastic on the vacuum box. They’re using a sheet of 3mm plywood with holes cut into it for heat resistance. Since heat is applied while the plastic is placed on the box, it makes sense that this sheet is not made of a material that softens under heat.1
The maker has an interesting “drop down” style small vacuum former on Printables, which is likely to reduce errors, but one of these vacuum attachment ones. It seems reasonably easy to produce. It’s basically a box, a tube out the side, and a platform where you can place a holey 3mm board. If I wasn’t trying to be fancy, I imagine I could knock out this design in a few minutes of OpenSCAD work.
Well. I just can’t help myself.
The box puts the adapter inside the box, so it’s not sticking out, has some supports underneath the lip supporting the cutout for the plywood plate. Sure, this would still need a way to hold the plastic sheet, but that’s less interesting so I didn’t make it. :)
Vacuum Formers- How to Make a Vacuum Former
- How to Use a Vacuum Former
- Vacuum Former – Things to Form
- Vacuum Former – Ideas to Improve Vacuum Former
- Maker Faire 2017 How to Make a Vacuum Former Presentation Slides
- Vacuum Forming an Arc Reactor
- Maker Faire Application: Vacuum Forming Workshop
- How to Make a Vacuum Former (2023)
- DIY Vacuum Formers
- Very Smol Vacuum Former
- You might wonder why I’m including screenshots rather than embedding the video… I basically don’t count on users not deleting their content and don’t trust any online platform that they will still be here in the future. [↩]