Adam Savage's Favorite Tools - Great Budget Vacuum Former!

The Power of Vacuum Forming: A Hands-On Guide

As I began to work with my vacuum former, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. The device, which I had been using for several weeks, was still a relatively new addition to my model-making arsenal, and I was eager to see what it could do. I started by turning on the vacuum and carefully adjusting the heating element as I went. This process is crucial, as forgetting to do so can blow fuses and render the machine useless.

As the machine hummed to life, I noticed that the plastic inside was starting to pull in and form a shape. I stuck my finger into one of the channels to test its depth and texture, and was pleased to find that it was perfectly sized for my needs. The vacuum's powerful suction made quick work of this process, and I found myself effortlessly shaping the plastic into the desired form.

One of the most surprising aspects of using a vacuum former is just how much difference it can make in terms of detail and precision. In particular, I noticed that the 60 thou pull made a significant difference in the conformity of the vacuum form compared to the 30 thou and 40 thou pulls. This meant that my final product was softer and more pliable than expected, with far fewer imperfections.

I decided to put my new vacuum former through its paces by attempting to create a piece with intricate details. I carefully selected a type of plastic that I had found worked well in the machine, and began to shape it into a complex form. To my amazement, the device performed flawlessly, producing a crisp and accurate result.

As I continued to work with my vacuum former, I couldn't help but feel a sense of awe at its capabilities. The device was incredibly easy to use, requiring only a basic understanding of heat and pressure to achieve professional-looking results. I found myself wondering how many hours I would have wasted struggling with traditional methods before discovering this new technology.

One of the most impressive aspects of my vacuum former is its ability to produce consistent results across different types of plastic. In particular, I was thrilled to discover that styrene worked beautifully in it, and that colored styrene was available for purchase at most craft stores. This made it easy for me to experiment with different colors and textures, opening up a whole new world of creative possibilities.

Despite its impressive capabilities, I couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by the cost of my vacuum former. At $120, it was certainly an investment, but one that I knew would pay off in the long run. I began to imagine all the hours and hours of tedious work that I could save with this machine, and the countless projects that I could complete without sacrificing quality.

As I wrapped up my experiment with the vacuum former, I couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude for its introduction into my world. It had opened up new doors of creativity and possibility, and I knew that it would be a valuable addition to any model maker's arsenal. If you're just starting out in the world of model making, or if you're looking to upgrade your skills with a new tool, I would highly recommend giving this vacuum former a try.

We didn't just film this vacuformer for this video; we also filmed it in 3D for the Oculus and you can check it out by following one of the links below to Oculus TV and get a much more immersive experience of just why I love this machine.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody adam savage here in my cave with a tool tip i am extremely  excited about also by the way you might notice that this video is not being shot on a phone  no a real camera is now filming me oh post covet it's starting to happen it's happening slowly  okay this is my vacuum former and i've covered this on the channel before this is my home built  12 by 16 inch vacuum former that i built about 20 plus years ago while fond davis and i were  first putting together our little shops in the mission and uh the excelsior of san francisco  and it's a great machine but it took me a while to put together require some expertise  and i had to do it that way because the the vacuum for machine i was copying to make this is both  insanely rare and when you can find it it's often well over a thousand bucks still the fact is small  discrete reasonably sized vacuum forming machines are still quite an expensive piece of kit for a  new model maker the reason i am having this tool tip right now is not to encourage you to build  your own vacuum for machine which you totally should do and you should check out our other video  which will be linked to in the comments below and you can build your own but if you don't want to  there is finally a much less expensive solution and i'm psyched about it i did a bunch of reading  online as to what people were doing for vacuum forming and i found a lot of reviews of this that  spoke quite highly of it this is a vacuum forming machine made for dentists for vacuum forming trays  for your pallets and things for your teeth that's why it's a discreet five by five inch bed here  it's a very small machine but it rings in at 120 bucks that's crazy cheap for  a vacuum farming machine so i was like let's get one let's try it out let's see how it does  and the results are pretty spectacular um i've got a couple of pieces here of a build i'm working  on and they're great example pieces of the kind of things vacuum forming is really great for  they are they have a flat side which is ideal for vacuum forming so you have it basically it's  sorry i'm getting ahead of myself in case you don't know what vacuum forming is it is a process  where you take a sheet of thermal plastic in this case styrene you put it in a frame and underneath  the heating element which softens the plastic and then you pull that plastic down over a form  and pull a vacuum and when you pull a vacuum there it is it sucks that hot plastic around  the form making a replica of that form you experience vacuum forming every day you deal  with a blister package that's how those are made using the vacuum forming processyou can vacuum form rounder objects this would be possible to vacuum form but you'd have to cut it  in half and add a draft to it and then once you've vacuformed both halves you cut them on the halfway  point and then glued them together often with a lip that is more advanced vacuum form technique  it's not what we're here to talk about i'm just here to run this through its paces and i've got  a sheet of thirty thousandths forty thousandths and sixty thousand styrene and i'm really curious  how these are gonna work for these two forms um they both have fairly a fairly significant  draft like there's a lot of pull so there's a lot of work to do for the plastic  i know it works for the 30 thousandths because that's the one i tested i'm  curious about the other two so here's how these work uh the heating element is in  here the vacuum's down here and you take a piece of your plastic and you clamp it inclamped now this is something i really dig about this machine is it's roughly five by five inches  but you could do you could actually fit a six by six inch piece of styrene in here and it'll work  just fine um oftentimes vacuum forming frames can be really precise and specific and you like have  to get it right otherwise you don't get the vacuum you want it's just a pain in the ass  this is much much easier the element swings in and swings out which i also think is pretty great  and the um the frame holder has two positions there's one right close to the heating element  and then there's one about an inch down and i've actually been finding it works way better when  i have it an inch down um up here this heating element is too hot it actually starts to roast  the plastic even before it gets to the right uh tensile uh what do you call it the right softness  okay i feel like i've been talking a mile a minute i'm sorry i'm excited that's what's  happening is i just like i i'm so psyched to find such an important tool at such a reasonable priceso here are the forms we're going to vacuform this a little hexagon and this little ribbed  tube thing we put our 30 000 plastic in there we clamp it we turn on the heating element swing it  in and bring this up to first position it takes a while to heat up the first time sometimes five  six minutes but once it's warm cycling is faster it's a little warm right nowi know that five inches by five inches might not seem like a large enough vacuum form bed for you  but most if you're doing model making specifically like spaceships and and tanks and garbage trucks  and other things in in let's say train scales or model scales this is an ideal size you one thing  i can't stand is when i have to vacuform something this big and i got to pull this out and waste a 12  by 16 piece of plastic to get this tiny little shell this is perfect for those smaller jobs  plus it cycles really quickly i i think this is going to get a lot of play here  um i have noticed that as the heating element heats up the the top of this gets  cook your tea hot like it's you could cook with this thing um so i may end up adding some kind  of handle to be able to sort of put this away without uh without burning myself all right  like every vacufarmer as it heats up the plastic bows up for a second before  settling down and starting to droop um the rule of thumb for vacuum formers is you often want them to  droop about as far as your buck is high but with this one the vacuum is so powerful i'm actually  pulling it down a little bit earlier than that now that may change with the 40 and 60 thousandths but  for the 30 thou this heating element is so efficient it gets that plastic real softum i don't mean for this video to be a comprehensive video about vacuum forming  but i will tell you if you have difficulty with the plastic conforming all over the part that  you're forming you can dust it with cornstarch and that will provide hopefully a path for air to  continue that suckage until you receive the detail that you were looking for all right we're close  we're totally close i'm going to turn off the heat pull it down vacuum goes on and look at that dudei know that was alarmingly quick but like check that  that's totally amazing all right let's pull this outthat right there i wished i'd had this device 20 years ago seriously i would have used the living  crap out of it um getting your buck back out of a vacuum form um is not hard it can be hard  but and for these two parts it's not going to be that difficult and they pop right outand this one tooand there you go i have these two paper thin replicas of the parts  that i started with and that allows me to make models lighter it allows me to make many  iterations of something i might only have one part of it allows me places to fit electronics  and mechanics that almost no other process would yield a thin part to do and this is thirty thou  i tend in vacuum forming like this would be about the thinnest i'd ever try  i don't like working with styrene that's too thin if you make model airplanes  you probably do work with styrene that's much thinner than this um but i'm going to  do another pull with the 40 thou and with the 60 pound we'll take a look at the three of themtogetheri really dig this arrangement for the table and it's a nicely  nicely designed little thing and it's just clearly what's here is a set screw with a balti tent in it  that aligns with that hole or that hole and gives you two different positions yeah that's great  i'm happy to say i've just done over this over today i've done several vacuum forms  and the base is not getting overly hot which i appreciate 40 thousandths here this is my  favorite thickness of styrene 40 thou is my bread and butter thickness it's yeah it's the  most versatile to me in terms of its flexibility and its rigidity it's the best balance balancein general when you're about to pull a form it's good to turn  off the heating element as you turn on the vacuum so you don't blow your fuse  this thing blows the views every time i forget to do that all right you can see smoke rising  off and we're drooping just a little bit i think we're doing pretty good i am going to uh  yeah yeah you know here we go as soon as the droop drops a little bit more okay here we goyeah look at that look at that at the very beginning of that form  you might have heard a little pop that actually was the plasticinside the end of this piece here pulling in and popping and that's why i stuck my finger there  because this piece hadn't fully drawn to the bottom  of those channels and the moment i put my finger here the vacuum continued to pull  the plastic into that channel that is a nice powerful vacuum it's a terrific little machinelet's do the 60 towelnow this is going to go pretty quickly because the heating element was already warm and i'm going  to kind of ride it to make sure i don't get the plastic too hot i may actually add a third detent  below those first two to give myself a little more adjustabilityyep see how it's smoking i don't want it to smoke  too much so now i'm lowering it a little bit to lower the heat  i'm just doing a little more heat adjustment all right so i think we're pretty close boy  yeah we're getting a real smoke point aren't we let's do it um heating element off this down backthere we go wow wowokay you can color me surprised at the efficacy of this machinewow my mind is kind of blown um on a normal vacuum former like this one you would notice  a significant difference in the conformity of the vacuum form between a 30 thou and a 60 thou pull  um that is to say the 60 thou is it's a lot more plastic to have to move into the interstices of  the part that i'm molding here and thus i should expect to see my final form be a little bit softer  with the thicker plastic because the former has to do more work to conform that plastic around  my buck i'm not seeing that here i'm actually seeing that the vacuum former is oh well it's a  little hard to get this part out hold on that's actually yeah come on come on there we go okayso this is 30 thou this is forty thou this is sixty thou and i don't know about you but i can't  really see much of a difference it's a little bit crisper here on the 30 than the 60 but not a lot  um they sell plastic for this i would tend not to buy it because i don't know how to work with their  dental plastic with model making but styrene works beautifully in it and you can pick this up  almost anywhere black white i'm still trying to find colored styrene but someday um again  i would recommend this for any young model maker any modeler beginning out anybody setting up their  first shop anybody who doesn't have a vacuformer and thinks they might need one man there's a new  sheriff in town and it costs 120 bucks and i'm just blown away by it i i love this bit of kit  uh well thank you guys for joining me for this tool tip i'm so excited about bringing vacuform  to the masses i mean it's not me it's just my recommendation but get the one of these formers  and vacuum form to your heart's content thank you guys for joining me i will see you next time  we didn't just film this vacuformer for this video we also filmed it in 3d  for the oculus and you can check it out by following one of the links below  to oculus tv and get a much more immersive experience of just why i love this machine\n"