So a while back my engineering class took a tour of a fabricating facility i think it was called American technical fabricators (or something) they seamed to do a little of everything digital road signs, metal fab, powder coat, and other stuff.

Well they took us to the dark corner and they had a plastics section. What they did was take a heated sheet of plastic like 1/8 thick shove it in a oven get it hot, take it out and set it over a wooden fourm that had holes drilled in it.

The holes were drilled in it for when they set the heated sheet of plastic down over it they fliped a switch and it sucked air from the holes pulling/vacuming it to the mold.

The guy said that they mainly do dashes and interior plastic parts in busses.

Well my dash pad cracked tried doing a repair but it didnt turn out. and i was thinking if i could use my old dash as a fourma and rig up some kind of pod for like a air fuel gauge and maybe a shift light thats molded right in.

Anyone have any experince with this stuff.

heres their website
http://www.amtechfab.com/

this is what i was there for ( it dosent take much to get into the paper around here)
http://www.michigansthumb.com/articl...a215459918.txt

 

hmm, this website shows how to do it yourself

http://www.studiocreations.com/howto...ing/index.html

I guess my main question is with this can the original foam dash be used as a form??

 

Did you ask the shop you we to, if they could use it as the form to pull a vacuum from?

Of course, they would hafta mount it up a drill holes through it, to pull a vacuum through it,

I know of a place that already makes vacuum form dash tops, but I dunno if they are replacements for stock dashes or if they specifically fit their full dash.

 

Im going to go in and ask them tommorow and see what they say.

Ive seen the other dash pads/covers and that would probably be the easiest way to go, but i plan on the a/f meter and think that it would look pretty good in a pod thats molded right into the dash pad.

 

There was a guy looking into vacuum forming years back. He had a body kit on his car, ended up going with mustang altezza's in the rear instead of the tail lights he wanted to vacuum form. His car was black and it ended up being a prototype for the company that released the body kits. Some people would use the word "rice" to describe it. I'm only telling you these things because maybe another user could remember his name and you could look up his thread. I do not condone or agree with the use of the word "rice", or judgmental mindsets when it comes to cars. I especially appreciate a non stock approach.

You don't really need to do all that to make a custom dash unless you're set on plastic or set on a crinkle pattern. You can make one out of fiberglass 100X easier.

Also, vacuum forming is not the only way to form up plastic. You could plastic weld, or use plastic casting. I cannot advise you as to which would be cheaper, but I can almost guarantee that fiberglass would be cheaper than casting or vacuum forming.

Mathius

 

I am actually going to make a custom center console using rubber molding pouring liquid plastic. Same steps as making a fiberglass mold.

If you look at doing it yourself via vacuum form, the vaccuum will need to be pretty strong to form that thick of plastic.

 

Vacuum Forming isn't too difficult. But you will need some basic equipment to make it work.

1] I don't think that you could use the original dash pad because I doubt it could withstand the heat of semi molten plastic laying on it. You probably would need to make a forming buck out of wood, or use the original dash pad and make a fiberglass mold from it.

2] You will need to get an adequate vacuum source. You will need to evacuate all of the trapped air to get the plastic down on the tool quickly before the plastic starts to cool.

3] Your going to need an oven large enough to evenly, and rapidly heat the plastic sheet. One thing to note is that the temp that you will need to get the plastic sheet up to, to properly form it, is not that far away from the temp that it will ignite and catch on fire.

Hope this helps.
pm me if you have any other questions.

 

my neighbor has one of these in his garage (a three car the machine is quite large) his will only do small stuff (he makes display cases for marbles) and he has metal forms he uses ( they look like thick aluminum) but they had to be machined for the aplication with holes for the air in certain locations. http://www.usadisplay.net/match.htm thats his site, again his machine only does small things but he may be able to put you in touch with the company that makes the forms/molds for these machines.

 

I have access to a vacuum former at school which I plan to experiment with a lot this year. It's not large enough to do a dash pad but it should be able to do most of the other plastics in f body's. I can't really offer to much info on it since I haven't been able to really use it yet. I've only watched a few test runs with some random forms.

 

The more I think about this, the more I can't understand why you'd want to vacuum form a dash. The costs can't be cheap. The street truck guys have been building really nice dashes just by framing them out with round bar and then skinning them.

The thick plastic of the stock dash weights pretty much the same as one of these framed out dashes.

Mathius