I am struggling with vacuum forming plastic in that my lab pump may be the wrong type. May invest in a shop vac instead. I think they need to be about 4 kwatts, much bigger than a home vac. Can anyone suggest industrial brands that pump that hard? Even better can anyone name for me their DIY vacuum forming vac cleaner please then I'll know what to search for - UK availability essential
Evacuated
What sort of lab pump are you using?
What sort of problems are you having?
On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 16:45:44 +0000, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com strung together this:
Something wrong with all the responses to your other question?
How about getting the blowers from a few scrap vacuum cleaners and hooking them up in series with some rigid plastic pipe? Could be problems with overheating if you run them for long though. Or if your pump is capable of producing low enough pressure but not at the volume required you could use a pressure vessel as a reservoir - evacuate it first, then just open a valve when you need to suck.
Comment: Do not some vacuum cleaner motors, probably canister types, need the evacuating air (after filtering) to flow though them for motor cooling purposes? The air out of my el cheapo 5 gallon bucket style shop vac. gets quite warm. N'Other comment. A domestic or shop vacuum is designed to move large volumes of air at low pressure? Vacuum forming would suggest small air volume at negative pressure up (or down?) to one atmosphere roughly 15 psi? Different application entirely? Just a thought.
That's why I mentioned overheating with sustained use.
Yes, that's why you'd need to run them multi-stage to get a decent pressure drop. I have no idea if you could get a working rig this way, but I'm a bodger and a skip diver, and I love to fiddle :-)
Specialaist pumps are available for the use of vacuum bags when veneering in woodworking. You might explore this possibility. ISTR one such device used a compressor and a venturi device to extract the air. If you enjoy bodging you might also explore this. The technology is relatively simply
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