vacuum forming anyone?

Anyone tried vacuum forming parts for model rockets? I would think that would be a better option for light-weight parts than 3D printing. I imagine one could 3D print the molds/positives and then vacuum form the skins.

https://www.matterhackers.com/store/l/vaquform-dt2-digital-desktop-vacuum-former/sk/MWNVJSUP

Apogee has an excellent series of vacuform products for FAI, with some videos and probably a Peak of Flight article or two.

I've used a few, and they are, in fact, amazingly lightweight.

For my Super Chief II, I vac-formed the explosive bolt blast shields. I ended up resin-casting the plug, as my initial attempts vac-forming directly from a finished balsa plug were unhappy - the heated plastic would blister the finish on the balsa plug. So I refinished the balsa plug and used that to create a silicone mold that I could resin-cast from. The resin plug worked fine. I've not yet tried forming from a 3D printed plug.

Beautiful!

User grafgulch on this forum makes beautiful vacuform parts for the 1/100 Saturn 1B and the 1/70th Apollo Little Joe II. He has a thread here about them, and I just posted a build thread on YORF about the LJII
I wish I had the patience to build a vacuform setup, I agree, 3D printing is cool, but many of the parts are way too heavy!

I would have been vac-forming, if I hadn't lost $500 to scammers on Kickstarter; a cautionary tale.

Nothing new in the model rocketry world - George Gassaway's site has his 1985 article about how to build a machine.
https://www.georgesrockets.com/GRP/Articles/vacuform.htm

I would love to give it a go for making the skins for the boosters of a 1/26 scale soyuz, but havent been able to find a former to borrow with a large enough bed size (600 x 150 mm) and dont have the room / funds to build one currently.
I have played with printing in vase mode but find the parts to week for most uses and very difficult to finish to a good standard.
Instead I think I am going to give this method a go and make some thin fibreglass shells.

The guy in this thread had a vacuformer, looked like he made some good canopies. I ordered and paid for 2 of them, ($27.00) and never received them.
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/borrow-estes-tomcat-canopy.130920/#post-1533011

Link to an article I wrote a long long time ago, on how to make your own vac-former box and frame to hold the plastic, using a Shop Vac and household oven. Article has tips on vac-forming.

https://www.georgesrockets.com/GRP/Articles/vacuform.htm

I had been tempted to make my own vac-former for a few years. Finally did it when I wanted to build a Delta 3950 model. No way was I going to turn 9 balsa noses for the strap-on boosters, or cobble up 9 identical nozzles out of paper or whatever. This model used 19 vac-formed parts, 1 for the big nose on top, 9 for the booster noses, and 9 for the booster nozzles.

rcktnut said:

The guy in this thread had a vacuformer, looked like he made some good canopies. I ordered and paid for 2 of them, ($27.00) and never received them.
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/borrow-estes-tomcat-canopy.130920/#post-1533011

Click to expand...

Yup, I sent him my original estes tomcat canopy, I have never gotten it back, Found him on facebook and msgd him, but he blocked me...

I have one trimmed tomcat canopy left that I need to have 2 or 3 clones made...if anyone is able to do it.

hcmbanjo makes clear cockpit canopies for his F-16 and F-104 Odd'l kits using "a small commercial model".
https://modelrocketbuilding.blogspot.com/2017/02/vacu-form-success.html#comment-form
But I can't see spending several hundreds of dollars for a machine for an occasional few needed parts.
That's outside my budget.
Looks much classier than a cardstock canopy on a model though.