APH3G

Vacuum Formed Components

Published -9th Jul 2015

Light aircraft instrument housing is vacuum formed in black textured ABS for low glare. Based on aluminium panel that holds 7 instrument array, vacuum form tooling was CNC machined from resin based tooling board.

Tooling was hand finished, mounted to a base board at a size to suit our vacuum forming machine. Underside of the board was drilled with 1mm holes to vent around the perimeter of the housing tool.

The forming was a deep draw of 230 mm and after cooling and blowing to remove from machine when tool was lowered, the excess waste material was trimmed.
Once placed onto a trimming jig on to machine an small trimming saw removed the last waste ABS and the basic part was then hand deburred to take off the sharp edges.