home made vacuum former

[lord nicon21]

i want to make a home made vacuum former. and would like some advice


really all it will be is a box make out of MDF with no top and put a thin bit of wood with lots of holes in and a vacuum hover on the botton.

i'll put the plastic in a frame and heat it with a heat gun and turn the vac on.


do you think this will work?

 

[kendor]

As long as the mould has sufficient air holes can't see why not, it may take a lot of experimentation to get it right.
What do you hope to produce with it?

 

[planenut]

Depending on the thickness of the plastic, you might find you cannot produce a strong enough vacuum.

 

[lord nicon21]

i'll be making some ducting for my dual xean server


the plastic is about 2m or 3m

 

[AdamW]

If you are making ducting, it is probably easier to form the ducts in other ways. Either using readily available ducting/pipes, or by using plastic sheet and a "strip heater" to form corners, and bend it round on itself.

My experience of this is limited to what I did in secondary school, but from what I found vacuum-formed plastics are pretty flimsy. The reason being, you generally use pretty thin plastic (2mm or 3mm as you mention, would be a no-no) and seeing as you want to make ducts then you would still need to make two halves and glue them together somehow.

Watch out if you use acrylic (perspex), it is very easy to build up a static charge when working with it. Not an issue once fitted into the computer (as it will be screwed to the chassis), but you will need to discharge it onto the chassis before you fit it to try and prevent knackering any chips.

If ducting doesn't seem like such a great idea now, you could always try watercooling

 

[AdamW]

Look what this guy has used!

 

[kendor]

The vacuum doesn't have to be that great just sufficient, as long as the plastic is sufficiently supple.
The point about sufficient air holes is so the plastic follows the mould in all the nooks and crannies.
It may cost you a bit at first trying but who knows you may get expert at it and form your own business

 

[lord nicon21]

If you are making ducting, it is probably easier to form the ducts in other ways. Either using readily available ducting/pipes, or by using plastic sheet and a "strip heater" to form corners, and bend it round on itself.

My experience of this is limited to what I did in secondary school, but from what I found vacuum-formed plastics are pretty flimsy. The reason being, you generally use pretty thin plastic (2mm or 3mm as you mention, would be a no-no) and seeing as you want to make ducts then you would still need to make two halves and glue them together somehow.

Watch out if you use acrylic (perspex), it is very easy to build up a static charge when working with it. Not an issue once fitted into the computer (as it will be screwed to the chassis), but you will need to discharge it onto the chassis before you fit it to try and prevent knackering any chips.

If ducting doesn't seem like such a great idea now, you could always try watercooling

lol i'v done watercooling but i'm not going to watercool a a server.

and my ducting is't going to be round its going to be a bit like an up side down U

 

[AdamW]

My system is probably very different to yours, it is almost entirely passively cooled, and very nearly silent. Proper silent too, not even a slight wooshy sound.

Thermaltake heatpipe PSU (no fan)
Passively cooled chipset
Passively cooled GPU
Zalmann "Flower" CPU cooler, about 600g of copper hanging off the CPU
One slowly-turning fan blowing on that so gently that you can only hear it if you put your face within 2 feet of the box (18dBA according to Zalmann).
Seagate Barracuda hard-drives (25dBA, apart from during access... which with XP seems to be a lot)

The loudest thing in my system is the router (I can hear an oscillator whining, need to move it to another room!) The only problem I have is the hard-disks getting hot. CPU is fine, even on a stress test, but the hard-drives climb towards 50 degrees if I put the side back on the case Saving up for a Lian Li 2100, then I should be sorted and silent. Shweet.

Then later on I will just build a separate server to sit in a cupboard and I won't care too much about the noise then!

Are your CPUs getting hot, or is this just an attempt to improve on things?

 

[kendor]

My system is probably very different to yours, it is almost entirely passively cooled, and very nearly silent. Proper silent too, not even a slight wooshy sound.

Thermaltake heatpipe PSU (no fan)
Passively cooled chipset
Passively cooled GPU
Zalmann "Flower" CPU cooler, about 600g of copper hanging off the CPU
One slowly-turning fan blowing on that so gently that you can only hear it if you put your face within 2 feet of the box (18dBA according to Zalmann).
Seagate Barracuda hard-drives (25dBA, apart from during access... which with XP seems to be a lot)

The loudest thing in my system is the router (I can hear an oscillator whining, need to move it to another room!) The only problem I have is the hard-disks getting hot. CPU is fine, even on a stress test, but the hard-drives climb towards 50 degrees if I put the side back on the case Saving up for a Lian Li 2100, then I should be sorted and silent. Shweet.

Then later on I will just build a separate server to sit in a cupboard and I won't care too much about the noise then!

Are your CPUs getting hot, or is this just an attempt to improve on things?

Blimey Adam , what's the setup used for? you don't run Ebay or something similar do you? or perhaps you give the meteorological office it's data?

 

[lord nicon21]

well at the mo there are 2 intel xeon heatsink on it and they hat a small but very load so i'm geting biger heatsinks and taking the fans off and using 2 92mm fans that are on the case

 

[AdamW]

Blimey Adam , what's the setup used for? you don't run Ebay or something similar do you? or perhaps you give the meteorological office it's data?

Yes, and I make it all wrong on purpose

General-purpose workhorse. I use it for video-editing, hence it needs a gigabyte or two of storage (currently 520 GB of hard-drive space, mmm, 0.5 terabytes). I also use it for media storage (I have all my CDs and DVDs recompressed and on there, and can access them from the network-enabled DVD player in the living room)

I considered building a server to do the media bit, but when I priced it up it was a bit too pricey for something I don't really need. But it is getting remarkably reasonably to build something with multiple-terabyte capacity.

Once I have got the current batch of expensive months out of the way I will no doubt fish my credit card out of my wallet and contribute to the national debt by building something that would be better suited to a multinational corporation

Nicon, what is your server used for?

 

[kendor]

Don't let NASA hear about it otherwise they might ask you to computate their next mission to Mars

 

[Diyisfun]

Rather than try to vacuum form, you may find it will shape better by making a male & female mould heat the plastic & using the male tool push it into the female.

To vacuum form you will need a reservoir of vacuum and will also need to seal the out edges of the material.

 

[AdamW]

Don't let NASA hear about it otherwise they might ask you to computate their next mission to Mars

Kendor, you are a genius! 50% of all Mars probes have failed, and now we know why: it is because NASA has been asking amateurs to compute their missions