a vacuform oven

01 Jun 2008
It's been a long long time since I've worked on my vacuform machine. I noticed that the frame was getting dusty in the cellar, what a shame. So last weekend I went to the hardware store and bought some supplies to start building the oven that goes on the top.

Instead of using special resistance wire to build the oven like the people at TK560 are doing, I decided already last year that I would use an array of halogenn linear tubes. A small test with a single 500W tube was very promising and allowed me to mold a 5mm thick plexiglas sheet.

My oven will spread heat over an area of 1 square meter with a total of 27 lamps spread out uniformly. Of course, I will almost never use sheets that big. That's why it will be possible to switch off most of the lights and use a smaller surface. My oven will provide a way to relocate some lamps to the center so that I can have more intensive heat at the center.

This week I spent some time buildinng the parts that will hold the lamps.

Here are some pictures: