Even if they don’t have one themselves, we’d wager the average Hackaday reader is at least vaguely aware of how a vacuum former works on a fundamental level. You heat up a plastic sheet until it’s soft, then use a vacuum pump to pull the ductile material down onto an object and hold it there while it cools off. It’s easy to build a vacuum forming rig yourself, but small commercial units are cheap enough that it might not be worth your time. If everything goes to plan, the technique is a quick and effective way of duplicating items around the home and shop.
But we were recently tipped off to a variation of this classic technique that’s certainly worth further research. As demonstrated in a recent video, [Nathan Martinez] shows how 3D printed sheets can be used in place of the 5″ x 5″ squares of thermoplastic film that his imported vacuum former was designed to use. It’s easy enough to do: just model up a square with the appropriate 2D dimensions in your CAD package of choice, and extrude it to a height of about .5 mm.
A printed mesh pattern could be used to form custom shaped filters or strainers.
So what’s the advantage? Well for one thing, it’s cheaper. Though admittedly, not by much. Going rate on Amazon seems to be about 90 cents per sheet for the real stuff, and some back of the envelope math shows the printed version coming in at around 30 cents given nominal filament costs. Whether or not those savings are worth the extra effort is certainly debatable.
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