On our way to TechShop yesterday we stopped at a plastics company to pick up some acrylic to use in the laser. My husband had purchased some 4×4 squares online, but he wanted to get a couple of bigger pieces. The place had been recommended by our instructor and we assumed it would be a store, but it turned out to be an warehouse that supplied custom orders. They did sell us a couple of acrylic sheets in white, but when my husband paid in cash, the receptionist had to get his change out of the petty cash fund. A little awkward.
The plastics place was in a very industrial neighborhood and we needed to cross three sets of train tracks to get back on the freeway. As luck would have it, there was a train crossing the middle set of tracks. It was traveling very slooowly and stopped several times. Numerous cars made U-turns in the middle of the road rather than waiting. It was 10 minutes before we were able to proceed and then we had to wait two cycles to get through the light and make the turn that would take us back to the freeway. We had class starting at 6:30, but we had reserved the laser starting at 4:30 to give it a test run. Turns out that white acrylic doesn’t produce really stellar results. So our trip to the plastics place was a complete bust.
Our class was the Vacuum Forming SBU. The vacuum forming machine allows you to take an object and create a plastic mold around it. So if you want to create custom plastic packaging or a plastic tray to fit a specific item, this is the machine to do it. Well, in theory it is. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working properly when the instructor tried to demonstrate it. He put the piece of plastic in the form and heated it up, but when he tried to “vacuum” the hot plastic around the mold it wouldn’t seal properly. A leaky vacuum doesn’t suck.
After many, many attempts at fixing the problem, which appeared to be in the seal between the two plates holding the plastic, the instructor finally gave up and offered to have us all rescheduled in another class. One of the attendees pointed out that we had essentially learned how to use the machine, despite the lack of a finished product and taking the class again would be pretty redundant. So we all got a pass. Which is good, because I can’t really see myself doing a lot of vacuum forming any time soon.