Vacuforming at TechShop RDU!
I may have said it before: the vacuform is one of the main reasons i became a member at TechShop RDU.
This is what a vacuformer looks like. Some are larger than this,
but this one will do about a 24" x 30" surface at up to a 5" height.
You clamp a sheet of styrene into the vacuum area,
slide your heat element into place, then lift the clamped sheet
up with a pair of levers at the machine's front.
Front view of the machine with items for vacuforming arrayed on vacuum surface grid.
The plastic sheet is suspended above this photo, getting rubbery from heat.
When the plastic is sagging in the middle, you flip the vacuum on and trip the levers to drop the clamped sheet. Immediately, the plastic is sucked down around the items on the grid, which in this case are pens, a mouse, and some alphabet magnets.
Here i've vacuformed a wig head and a WWI doughboy helmet.
This shows a phenomenon called webbing, those ridges which result if your mold matrix is too deep or your pieces are placed too close together on the table.
Top left: Candy McClernan's skull mask matrix; Top right: life cast
Foreground: some fedora tip presses and a couple "eyeball" domes for mascot heads
And, just this week I was offered the opportunity to become a plastics lab trainer for them, teaching Safety and Basic Use (SBU) of the strip bender, heat press, and vacuform! I'm super-excited about this for a couple of reasons.
First off, I appreciate the opportunity to train others on a machine that i really love. There's nothing like a vacuform for what it does, which is quickly skin a mold without undercuts. Sure, there are things that aren't great (vacuformed styrene is easily torn, for example, so in my field we always reinforce a vacuformed mask or piece of armor with something--papier mache layers, moldable thermoplastic like Wonderflex, etc.), but man, is it fast for multiples. You need a dozen pairs of greves for a battle scene? Sculpt one and then bang them out on a vacuform. By lending a hand with training through the SBU, i get to show other makers and artists and artisans in the area how these cool machines work, and see what unimaginable but surely awesome things they will make with them!
Second, this makes it super easy for us over at work to utilize the resource of TechShop's plastics lab. Not only can i teach my own masks and armor students the vacuform and get them certified to use it, but i could even teach other colleagues--props artisans or the folks in scenic, who knows? In theatre, you never know why you need something til you need it like, RIGHT THEN, and this way, if (when) the situation arises where, say, our propmaster realizes she can make these thirty identical things due next week if only she had a vacuform, we can book an SBU for her and her staff and then they can all be able to use that vacuform! Who knows, it's a resource maybe that only i and my students will use, but at the same time, theatre is about collaboration and preparation, and i believe you can never be too prepared.
I'm conducting my first plastics lab SBU next week during Spring Break, at 2pm on March 8th. The training lasts and hour and once you've done it, you're able to sign up to use any of the plastics lab equipment without supervision. Tuition is $35 which includes a sample vacuformed item to take home, and you pay for the class online via TechShop's website, here: http://techshoprdu.com/classes#Plastics
(Obviously if that date isn't good for you, there are other opportunities to do the training with one of the other teachers, Ruthan. She's the one who taught my SBU when i took it, and I totally recommend her training ability.)
This is what a vacuformer looks like. Some are larger than this,
but this one will do about a 24" x 30" surface at up to a 5" height.
You clamp a sheet of styrene into the vacuum area,
slide your heat element into place, then lift the clamped sheet
up with a pair of levers at the machine's front.
Front view of the machine with items for vacuforming arrayed on vacuum surface grid.
The plastic sheet is suspended above this photo, getting rubbery from heat.
When the plastic is sagging in the middle, you flip the vacuum on and trip the levers to drop the clamped sheet. Immediately, the plastic is sucked down around the items on the grid, which in this case are pens, a mouse, and some alphabet magnets.
Here i've vacuformed a wig head and a WWI doughboy helmet.
This shows a phenomenon called webbing, those ridges which result if your mold matrix is too deep or your pieces are placed too close together on the table.
Top left: Candy McClernan's skull mask matrix; Top right: life cast
Foreground: some fedora tip presses and a couple "eyeball" domes for mascot heads
And, just this week I was offered the opportunity to become a plastics lab trainer for them, teaching Safety and Basic Use (SBU) of the strip bender, heat press, and vacuform! I'm super-excited about this for a couple of reasons.
First off, I appreciate the opportunity to train others on a machine that i really love. There's nothing like a vacuform for what it does, which is quickly skin a mold without undercuts. Sure, there are things that aren't great (vacuformed styrene is easily torn, for example, so in my field we always reinforce a vacuformed mask or piece of armor with something--papier mache layers, moldable thermoplastic like Wonderflex, etc.), but man, is it fast for multiples. You need a dozen pairs of greves for a battle scene? Sculpt one and then bang them out on a vacuform. By lending a hand with training through the SBU, i get to show other makers and artists and artisans in the area how these cool machines work, and see what unimaginable but surely awesome things they will make with them!
Second, this makes it super easy for us over at work to utilize the resource of TechShop's plastics lab. Not only can i teach my own masks and armor students the vacuform and get them certified to use it, but i could even teach other colleagues--props artisans or the folks in scenic, who knows? In theatre, you never know why you need something til you need it like, RIGHT THEN, and this way, if (when) the situation arises where, say, our propmaster realizes she can make these thirty identical things due next week if only she had a vacuform, we can book an SBU for her and her staff and then they can all be able to use that vacuform! Who knows, it's a resource maybe that only i and my students will use, but at the same time, theatre is about collaboration and preparation, and i believe you can never be too prepared.
I'm conducting my first plastics lab SBU next week during Spring Break, at 2pm on March 8th. The training lasts and hour and once you've done it, you're able to sign up to use any of the plastics lab equipment without supervision. Tuition is $35 which includes a sample vacuformed item to take home, and you pay for the class online via TechShop's website, here: http://techshoprdu.com/classes#Plastics
(Obviously if that date isn't good for you, there are other opportunities to do the training with one of the other teachers, Ruthan. She's the one who taught my SBU when i took it, and I totally recommend her training ability.)