Plastic Injection Moulding Specialists. Est 1948.

Vacuum forming, commonly known as vacuforming, is a simplified version of thermoforming, whereby a sheet of plastic is heated to a forming temperature, stretched onto or into a single-surface mold, and held against the mold by applying vacuum between the mold surface and the sheet.

The vacuum forming process can be used to make most product packaging, speaker casings and even car dashboards.

Normally, draft angles must be present in the design on the mold (a recommended minimum of 3°), otherwise release of the formed plastic and the mold is very difficult.

Vacuum forming is usually – but not always – restricted to forming plastic parts that are rather shallow in depth. A thin sheet is formed into rigid cavities for unit doses of pharmaceuticals and for loose objects that are carded or presented as point-of-purchase items. Thick sheet is formed into permanent objects such as turnpike signs and protective covers.

Relatively deep parts can be formed if the form-able sheet is mechanically or pneumatically stretched prior to bringing it in contact with the mold surface and before vacuum is applied.^[1]

Suitable materials for use in vacuum forming are conventionally thermoplastics, the most common and easiest being High Impact Polystyrene Sheeting (HIPS). This is molded around a wood, structural foam or cast/machined aluminum mold and can form to almost any shape. Vacuum forming is also appropriate for transparent materials such as acrylic which are widely used in applications for aerospace such as passenger cabin window canopies for military fixed wing aircraft and “bubbles” for rotary wing aircraft.

- Wikipedia

At S.B.Weston we will always encourage prototyping of your product in order to realise design aspects which can not be fully appreciated through computer rendered models. Prototypes are valuable for gaining an insight into how the product will perform and what its limitations and weaknesses may be. Understanding problems from a prototype allows the design to be easily be amended well in advance of tool production.

There are many available prototyping methods. We can machine plastics, wood or metal and where possible we will always work in the same materials as the intended final production version. Ensuring that the functional and stylistic aspects of the prototype are acurate to the production version is of optimum importance.

We transmit CAD information from files supplied by our designers, directly into our HERCO CNC milling machine allowing us to work on prototypes very quickly and accurately.

There are certain types of product where we will use Vacuum Forming instead of the traditional milling from a solid process. The process is most commonly used to produce product packaging using a material such as HIPS High Impact Polystyrene but is also very effective for many types of prototypes.

In the past we have manufactured prototypes using methods such as  Stereo Lithography.