Vacuforming

I was thinking of doing molds too. I hope my sculpting abilities are better than my sheet styrene parts. I'm working on a little table top former and for my cosplay a slightly bigger one that stands on its own. I got a book on doing it and found some stuff online. I've got a small notebook filled with retro transformer weapons, since they got lost, to replace G1 and 2 plus others.

I've done some vac-forming, but not for anything as small scale as action figure parts. For that size item, you really could get away with a relatively inexpensive machine, as you wouldn't need a super hot heat source (you'd want to use thin plastic, like maybe even as thin as .002 or .003 thickness to retain your details in the plastic) For a vacuum on something that thin, you'd probably be able to go with just your home vacuum cleaner too to be honest.

You might though, be better off just sculpting out your piece in wax or clay or plastic, or whatnot, and then making a silicon rubber mold instead (putting the money into a vacuum chamber/pot) which would allow you to more consistently get your resin pieces back out of the mold without destroying it.

Just my thoughts :-) (my vac-forming experiences are more in the costuming realm)

Hey doc, how come you're one of the only ones to respond around here? I'm building a cheap machine to start with just to learn how (and to make cosplay costumes). The worst part I think is learning to build the stuff. I'm working on a custom megatron and I cannot get the cannon right. I'd love to form it and make it out of resin but I can't even decide exactly what its missing. I've been trying to get my buddy, Vash_bitchko on here, to go in with me as he's a Transformers nut to help with costs and he used a former for his Quintessan.

The only problems I see with that are the start-up and maintenance costs, machines are frikkin' expensive to maintain >_<

But sounds great, you'd definitely never run out of customers.