3D vacuum forming?

[RogerI...@aol.com]

There's a lot of progress being made on 3D printers, but I haven't heard anything about other 3D technologies. What I have in mind is a 3D vacuum forming device. It would be based on those "pin" toy devices:

 

 

Beneath ( or behind ) the set of pins would be a movable pin-setting device which would go to each and every pin and set its position. After all the pins are set a plastic sheet is heated and vacuum formed over the pins. Obviously the smoothness of the formed product would depend on the sze of the pins. But once the pins are set, you can make any number of vacuum formed parts, unlike standard 3D printing which requires a long time for each copy,

 

So, has anyone heard of anything like this? Might it be a project we could work together on? Might it be suitable as a Kickstarter type project?

 

- Roger Garrett

[Jerry Isdale]

You will probably have more dimples from the pins than you would want. A very high resolution pin array would be prohibitively expenseive

I've seen people using 3d prints on a standard vacuum former table to good effect.

Its pretty easy to build a simple, effective vacuum former.

Jerry Isdale

isd...@gmail.com

--