Sean's New Toy

[thatdecade]

I'm a believer. That vid showed exactly what I expected to see.



I've seen those bumps before too from vacuformers. I've also seen the plastic take on the wood grain patterns which is cool, but since I've never worked with transparent material before it was never noticeable from the outside.

I kinda like the bumps though. Doing an extreme closeup on the in game sword shows a similar micro bump pattern. Kinda like scales or spots.

 

[mc halo3]

OMFG THATS THE BEST MACHINE EVER!!!!!,seriously its amazing,and try to get some odst armour cranked as soon a s possible,man i would have a stash of armor(over 100 pieces)mostly of the same stufflol),man sean im jealous that you have such AWESOME skill

 

[Sean Bradley]

First trimmed parts. I decided to test trim and sand a rejected piece. It only took about an hour to trim it up.

The PETG grinds down smooth and tools very nicely. I just used an 80 grit belt on this, and the edge is very clean. Oddly enough the plastic has a kind of purplish hue on edge.. it just wants to be an energy sword.



That's the last you'll see of the Sword blade til the WIP thread goes up, but I might have some new parts making their way onto the former this weekend.



!

 

[null]

What thickness of Aluminum sheet did you use for the forming surface? the TK560 article doesn't say...

 

[techbot]

Oh wow, Those lines are so crisp.



Looking great Sean, If this was a rejected piece I cant wait to see what your final product will be.



Hope you get your Under-heating issue figured out.



Keep it up!





-Techbot

 

[Loves hina]

Wow, you beat me to it man. great job though, cant wait to see the finished piece. Ill have to get my hands on one of these.

 

[DogWizard]

You know - if we joined forces we could field about the most kick-ass Grifball team on this (or any other) planet... :lol



Looks great, Sean!

 

[Sean Bradley]

You know - if we joined forces we could field about the most kick-ass Grifball team on this (or any other) planet... :lol

Sounds like a good plan to me!

 

[mkshane81]

Looks awesome!! That plastic did clean up very well along the edges....great work Sean!!

 

[falcon NL]

Sean every time i see a video of you, I fall more and more i love with you your projects :rolleyes



Im really loving it, seems to me like a nice clean pull. Starting to wonder what else you could do with that amount of detail for a vacuum pull.

 

[DerKraken]

hey Sean, whats the thickness of the PET you're using? Also, how rigid is it?



beautiful pulls man, you've got to be stoked with your results. One more question also: what kind of glue are you using to join the halves?



Looking forward to seeing the final product!

 

[BlueRealm]

Man that's looking sweet!! Did you CNC those mdf pieces? Your my hero SEAN



You might try that glass frosting spray paint if you want to get some foggy luminescent effects.

 

[Sean Bradley]

Wow.. some more responses!



@ Techbot: I've got the heating under control.. just needed to add a step in the heating to rotate the frame. The pulls are like 10x sharper now that I added that simple step.



@DerKraken: The PETG I'm currently using is .125", and is a little thick for this purpose. I should probably go down to something a bit thinner like .080. It's nice and strong.. not hard and brittle like acrylic or plexiglass. If you take a piece of it a attempt to snap it in your hands, it just bends.. it doesn't break without scoring the cut. I took my first test blade and beat it over a chair back for 10 minutes trying to break it... didn't even dent the material. Thanks to Blue Realm for the pro-tip of using this material.



I'm using Tap plastic Weld-On cement to join the halves. It's crystal clear, pulls into the seam via capillary action, and actually softens then hardens the joining surface. The plastic is actually welded, not simply glued. Should be nice and strong.



@Blue Realm: The energy sword bucks were hand carved, I'm flattered if they look CNC'ed. I used a belt sander, angle grinders to carve the MDF gradually and loads of hand sanding to smooth things out. All of which a nice CNC could do in prolly an hour. It's all good, I enjoy my work and keep learning to work faster.







Speaking of which I might be firing up the vac table again this weekend I have some new armor Buck's to try out. I'll post some more footage of the process if all goes well. In the meantime I'll just leave you with this progress from last week:

Pulls tight!

Works right!

 

[Adam]

W :eek W

 

[DerKraken]

Fantastic. Thanks for all the tips man, and once again that is a stellar machine you've got. Glad its working out for you.