How did Form1 make brake-bent acrylic housing?

How did they make the acrylic casing for form1? Hot-break-bending tool, extrusion, or ??

The Bendradius is too large for consistent hot brake bending.. IT must have been formed over a tool.

---

[github.com]

Without having seen one in person my bust guess is that the radiused shell (left/right/top) was molded as one piece and then the endcaps (front / rear) were sonic welded to them. The fact that the bottom has inward radius' it couldn't have been formed in one go, had to be manufactured in pieces.

Thanks. Do you know where one could get such a one-piece part made? Is it consider an extrusion shape?

What size are you looking to have made?

and what wavelength are you tryng to block?

Wavelength - don't care. Any color is fine.

Size, about 12" x 12"x 10" The bend can be 1" or less radius, anything over 1.5" would probably be too big.

Well, yes actually, you do need to care about the wavelength. Most of these curing resins respond to UV light smaller than 405nm. If the function of the hood is to prevent the premature hardening of the resin while at the same time preventing the powerful UV build light from damaging your eyes or skin then you need to make sure you block these wavelengths. The reason the plastic FORM1 uses is orange is because red/orange filters tend to block much of that wavelength of light. I would look into welding screens as they can provide some useful information on what unique properties the plastic needs to have in order to block UV light.

Hello,

Thanks for your careful consideration. My main question is on how to bend the acrylic (Generally) not for the specific use with UV/blue light resins. And yes, you are right on all accounts there : )

At school we used to have a machine for bending acrylic. It consisted of a hot-taught wire which you would place your sheet of acrylic under. This would soften a very straight line on the plastic which you could bend by hand. If you had the wire further away, it would heat a wider area and you could form a larger radius by bending over a form.

So I finally found the answer to this and Konwiddak was right on - its just a standard machine in hot bending plastics.

if you will make just one part for project, take metal pipe, heat it with heatgun from inside, so the pipe gets hot and then bend plastic over it.


you may help it with some heat from outter side. its critical to heat it right, not overheat.

haha yes i remember, acrylic overheats and starts to blister .... ohhhh nooooo !

---

______________________________________
__my mixed bag blog || aka --> [http] || ___ so 3D printing is everywhere ... dont worry, hospitals can now 3Dprint body parts, they will charge you $1million excluding surgical fees ... you will die paying your debts. thats their aim ___ if every patent expires tomorrow, everybody will surely get a 3dprinter and make EVERYTHING ! ____ there is a "DIY-DTG" t shirt printing forum, you can mod an EPSON printer to PRINT like a pro. ___ CNCzone? overly commercialized it seems ___ my country? they will be taxing you for every cm of road you use and track you to your grave using GPS and its government authorized, now they will fire all the traffic wardens instead.___ EEVBLOG? there is only 1 way to do things --> take it apart like a pro

[www.youtube.com]