Vacuum Forming ABS

[MadMango]

Material thickness is .090", I have cover that is 17.25" x 7.00" and needs to be formed to 8.00" tall. Is this too much of a draw on the material to consider for vacuum forming?

Our quantities are not high enough to consider rotational molding or injection.

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
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[sean01]

Madmango,

I would suggest your depth of draw is too big for this material thickness using the Vacuum forming method. In my experience you may have trouble with the material tearing across the corner of the deep draw. There are some tricks however that you can pull in order to get the material to flow better around the corner and down the depth of draw however - most of them based upon the positioning of the vacuum ports. These are a bit hit and miss though !!!

Sean

 

[MadMango]

Thanks for the info. I forgot to mention that all corners and edges will have a radius between .38-.50 inches. I may also be able to bump up the material thickness to 1/8.

[green]"But what... is it good for?"[/green]
Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
Have you read faq731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

 

[davidinindy]

1/8" would still end up pretty thin. Does your machine have a prestretch or preblow? That would help. Also, make the corner rads as large as possible. We could probably do that on our Geiss machine, but it is a little more high-tech than most.

 

[SteveAf]

You can do this.

I have made parts with as much a 20" of draw. However, is it a bit tricky. The thickness of the sheet material is critical.