Vacuum | MYNOCK'S DEN

Vacuum

If you are normal, you will already have a vacuum cleaner with an attachable hose that you use for sucking up dog hair from your carpet. If you are too lazy to drag your home vacuum outside to clean your car, and for that reason have a shop vac in the garage, you are awesome like I am. Whatever the case, either one of these types of vacuums will do. Seriously.

Once you have everything set up, you will be able to lift the whole vacuum forming table off the ground by the suction power of your dinky, $60 Walmart vacuum.

Here is a little video demonstrating just how well a simple shop vac does the job.

After two years of running this setup, I began to experience soft pulls; I noticed the problem when attempting to complete my nephew’s baby Stormtrooper helmet, and narrowed the problem down to a loss of suction. The rubber trim on the bottom of the frame warped and partially melted from constant heating and needed to be replaced. I used some rubber trim from Home Depot to redo the seal.

Then, to increase the suction further, I took an ABS sheet, cut a large-ish hole in the middle, and placed this onto the platen (table top). The ABS sheet covers the holes in areas where suction is not needed, which increases suction around the mold (my old Darth Nihilus mask in the following photo), resulting in sharper pulls.

I also invested in another shop vac (on sale for $60 at a local Canadian Tire), used a jig to cut another hole in the bottom of the table, and connected the shop vac to it. The second vac makes a HUGE difference! The pulls on this set up are now perfect!