Vacuum Forming

My tiny cheap vacuum-forming machine - [12/07/07] - I've been wanting to make a vacuum forming machine since about 2000 and I really wanted to make a nice one with a built in heating coil and stand etc. There are several nice tutorials online and plans to build nice machines, but building them would require I make space to work on it and buy materials and I always ended up finding excuses not to build one. I didn't really have a good reason other than wanted to build a few custom video game controller cases. Well, on a whim I decided I would at least build a small one and just use things I already had just so I could say I'd built one. So heres my super cheap under $3 vacuum forming machine.

I know, you're horribly impressed. Well, let's lay out how to build this bad boy.

Materials:

I put a 2 cm border around the edge of the lid, then made a 1x1 cm grid on the top, and then took to drilling all 216 holes. I then drilled a .75 inch hole in the side and stuck the pipe nipple in it. This gave me an air tight place to attach the vacuum cleaner hose.
Then I cut up the paint stirrers and glued them together to make two identical rectangular frames. I then used the leftover pieces to strengthen them and to make a lip on the bottom frame that fit around the cigar box. The lip makes it easy to align the frame on the box.

And that's pretty much it. It might be better to get a cigar box without paper on it, but I didn't have any other use for this one so what the heck. This is a 5x8 inch area so it's large enough to do the controllers I want, but still extremely small and easy to stick out of the way.

Here's one more shot showing the inside just in case you wanted to see it.