Mike Hummel's vacuum formed coin bank

After using 40 mil to vacuum form both halves I then attached them with using a small 40 mil strip. After they were attached I used spackle to fill in any cracks along the seam line. Unfortunately the spackle dried in an off white color when the styrene is bright white. I am now deciding if I should just spray paint the whole thing white or leave it how it is. Here are two pictures below.

finished model

the second try i decided to use a 20 mil for the inside strip so that my forms would not deform and they would fit better together and it worked i still had some gaps to fill with the spakle but it fit much better than the first one

after glueing the 2 pieces together i noticed that it fit in a weird way because the inside flap that i attached deformed one of my halves so i tried fixing the gaps with spakle but i wasn't satisfied with the result so i decided to try again and re do the whole thing 

Final Vaccuform

This is my finished vaccuform project. I found the paste to be very useful, but for the larger gaps I had to leave several hours for it to dry before I could start sanding. I used 40 mil styrene for the inside tape, which distorted the shape somewhat, but I was able to correct it by holding the peice together so that it set properly. Next time I would definitely use a thinner gauge styrene for the tape though.

Vacuum Form Porject

I have finished my vacuum form project. To complete the project I first cut out an abstract shape out of MDF. The only guidelines I used for making my shape was to make it have a flat bottom so that it could stand up. After I cut out the shape on the ban saw on Monday I sanded it smooth. Then I routered the edges. In class on Wednesday I split the two pieces of MDF apart and vacuum formed both pieces at the same time of out 40 mil. styrene. I then cut the shapes out with a xacto knife and used weld on and a strip of 20 mil styrene to stick the two pieces of styrene together. I then used spackling to fill the gabs and finally sanded the model smooth.

Vaccuform Progress

I first carefully sketched out a shape with various curves and angles on the double block of MDF, and cut the perimeter out on the small band saw, using relief cuts for the one tight curve. Then I filed and sanded the edges smooth with 80 grit, and chose a simple rounded edge bit for the router. The router wasn't able to completely get into the one interior angle, so I filed it slightly by hand. Then it was ready to be vaccuformed, which went pretty smoothly I think.

The styrene was trimmed from the mold and released, and I will be sanding, assembling, and finishing it today.

finished (kind of) vacuum form.

I'm all but done with the sanding on this project, but I have to run, so here it is glued up.