Thanks to James Bruton from xrobots.co.uk for sending in this DIY Vacuum Forming Machine project that he made. He is creating some props from plastic and a vacuum form is one way to get consistent plastic forms of the wooden objects he has already created. If you want to jump right to the fun and see the machine in action skip to 7:55 in the video. Of course as James warns be very careful when using this system since the high output heater is in a MDF box you would never want to operate the heater unattended and you would want to allow the box to cool between operations to prevent it getting hot enough to combust.
Update from James, he says that even after 10 pulls in a row the box didn’t get very hot due to the use of the foil.