You gotta be joking right? But heaps of people have done it though, on youtube. Quite basic and cumbersome to reload the frame with a plastic sheet but still viable for one-offs. Have a look at this:-

So I thought we might try to make something a bit more permanent and resuable. I invited Justin Alfred for this little garage project. Let's take a walk thought the whole thing.

21st Nov 09 - 10am

Went to Justin's home. He just got up. Pulled him out his home and we went to Reverse Garbage to get some stuff. Then to Bunnings for the rest.

From Bunnings:-

• Some 80 x 20 pine
• Some 40 x 20 pine
• El Cheepo heater (they didn't wanna sell us heaters during summer, so that's stil to be bought)
• MDF board, 6mm thick x 2
• Misc brackets and angles and fasteners

From Reverse Garbage:-

• Expanded PVC foam sheet, 3mm thick
• Foam tape (seems like EPDM but not too sure)

Same day, approx 2pm

Took a long time to get all the stuff! But we're now getting started in building the machine in my garage. Sweltering 40 degree heat suggests that the heater may not be needed.

This the wall part of the vac box. There are 2 bits to the whole machine - the va c box, the frame to hold the plastic sheet and maybe I can add the heater as well but that's not happening for now.

We've just put in one of the supports - also made out of 80 x 20s. The purpose of these supports is to well, support the top and bottom panels when the suction hits. Made some holes to allow air to pass through all chambers.

The whole structure feels rigid now.

You can see we've clad the bottom of the frame in 6mm MDF - glue the thing on plus screws. We've also cut a nice hole for the vax nozzle to push through. It was quite a snug fit and we didn't need any foam tape around here. Glued and screwed the top cover once we're sure we haven't left anything in there.

Ah finally. We drilled out a heap of holes where the frame was going to sit and stuck foam tape around there. Of course this means that there is only one size frame we can use, but we weren't going to heat up our frame with the tape in it. We just didn't know if it would melt.

Justin taped up all the sides while I tried completing the frame. Now on to the frame.

I was fantasizing about a hinged frame, but that would have required some other sort of hardware we weren't prepared to invest in. If we could weld aluminium I'll be doing it out of some RHS instead.

Well that's the frame really, just 2 sets of 40 x 20s in a square.

We then drilled all the way throught the frames and used 8 M5 bolt and winged nut sets to clamp the plastic in between. Oh and foam tape on the clamping surfaces as well just to keep everything airtight. We had a final size of 380 x 380 formable area, and a 420 x 420 sheet of plastic.

Loaded a piece of 3mm expanded PVC into the frame. It was getting exciting!

Our set up getting ready for the first pull. Remember we couldn't get a heater? We ended up using 2 heat guns to heat up the PVC. That took some time. 5 mins later we had a floppy piece of heated PVC, and we were ready to hit the vac switch.

Always raise the tooling slightly as we have done down here to get a nice sharp edge. Either that or you make sure your plastic is HOT enough to form, and your VAC is strong enough to suck.

Ok, not hot enough. We do need a heating element of some sort. But at least that's the first one and it wasn't leaking air at all. *Pat pat*

I reckon we're going to get some oven elements and chuck them in a aluminium tray of some sort. We'll have more when that time comes! Enjoy!!!

10 December 2009 - sick leave day

*Sniff sniff*. Still pondering over the heating element. I dont' know if I should really just plug in a used oven element and wire it up to mains. Can't find a decent wiring diagram on the net. Found one site using nichrome wire and a lot of ceremic posts, don't know if I wanna do that. Anyways, too sick to continue. I'm going to bed.