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Looks like April is going to be an exciting month. We got our new machine in. Here is the unloading video. I won't embed video in this post. https://youtu.be/L43NuINsXFM

Look for more announcements about this in the next few weeks. We will have more videos soon I hope. Then in about a month, some big news unrelated to this will be announced I think. A really big purchase deal is in the works.

Did you bite the bullet and get your own vacume forming machine?

alien3t wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:53 pm Did you bite the bullet and get your own vacume forming machine?

Ding Ding, we have a winner. Tired of others messing up bodies for me. Thought it was my turn to screw them up.

Cool, good luck with it. Sometimes the only way to get something done right is to do it yourself.

Time lapse of my wife and I today. Moved it through a wall to get it into a another room. Took the wall apart.
https://youtu.be/aNtNk9bfi8A
Tomorrow we will have some more help again and get it off the crate platform hopefully.

mytimac wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2017 7:33 pm

alien3t wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2017 5:53 pm Did you bite the bullet and get your own vacume forming machine?

Ding Ding, we have a winner. Tired of others messing up bodies for me. Thought it was my turn to screw them up.

Thats an awesome killer investment. And hope all the luck, (and to hopefully help pay for it with purchases in the future. )

We only had time last night to run 6 sheets. One I had in upside down, 1 had a little webbing near the slot for big brace that goes across on this buggy. The other 4 came out pretty good. Not bad for our first real go. We will probably put up for sale the 5 decent ones and move on to another mold for now. There are some others we really want to try out that haven't been run in ages.

It has taken a long time to get to this point. We had to get the drying oven you see in background and electrical upgraded in the new building location. The former needs 100 amp and the oven is another 30. Also had to get air compressor to power the mechanics and run the piping for that. Then when we thought everything was ready, the heaters in the former didn't work. Spent days troubleshooting that. Had to send the PLC in for a double check. They found an error in the code and then sent it back.

Once you get the machine running, figuring out placement of web catchers, temp settings, heat time, and vacuum pressure levels all start to mess with your head.

Hopefully more great bodies run in the next week. One thing we are still trying to figure best method on is cutting down 4 x 8 foot sheets of lexan into smaller sizes.

you should be able score and snap the lexan sheets. maybe a nice clean flat bench with something like a drywall cutting T sqare fixed on the bench to use a straight edge, ruler and snap fence with a utility knife. otherwise, a standard >4 ft wide sheet metal shear. obviously much more costly.

Yeah we are doing that currently but looking at a large shear. Also might try a air power shear or nibbler, but that creates more waste.