Yes I was a surprised too. I did however cover the whole thing in epoxy after roughing. Then a little more where it did not penetrate well.
This allowed a really high definition and some extra toughness over the surface. Stopped that fluffy blown finish you can get with mdf, seems the surface is harder than the core.
The white colour on the vid is a water based mdf primer which allowed me to refine it even more. It also allows me to see at a glance if the mold is suffering at all.
Helps thats its a round mold and not a 3d job like yours. My next mold is a 3d surfacing job, but should easier to form being a fairly shallow draw.
Sorry, I thought my comments fell within the range of friendly banter in amc. Didn't realize that others might have viewed the thread. And I didn't mean to disparage what was probably obvious to everyone that viewed your picture as a high dollar part, and what might not be so obvious, was the result of many hours of "blood, sweat & tears".
Thanks for those kind words, even if I did belittle your baby by calling it a flying saucer.
The surfaces of MDF and LDF are always slightly more dense than the inside. Function of the manufacturing process. When using either as a sacrificial board we machine off the surface if we need better suction for small parts.
The only problem with coating MDF is you lose the porosity which allows the mold to pull vacuum across the whole surface, but it does last longer.
The "secrecy" is cute, as if those of us who vac form don't know how a pressure box machine works. I am surprised you don't have pneumatic clamps for the frame.
I seem to get pretty good definition compared to the previous manufacturers efforts, mine are made from 2mm stock not the vending cup thickness crap they were using.
That was a joke Michael ;) I got into that job by pure accident, well it was because I made my wife earrings of the same thing for a Devo gig last year.
There is no real money in the job, but at least they are not made in China anymore! It's a just for fun side project with a little bit of profit (for me) So the machine was self designed and built over the christmas holiday last year instead of investing any money into a commercial machine. I did however look into buying one, the numbers did not stack up and it's not core business.
The "veil of secrecy" nonsense was just because I was on my 2nd heater design after not being happy with the results of the original. So it was a quicker job to mount it on 2 sheets of ply and quickly alter heights to find optimum. The result is that everything is obscured by those plywood cheeks while heating!
The machine has evolved now.
Still manual clamp, but now the machine has evolved into a semi auto affair with plc controlling heater modulation (Energy saving), heating cycle, heater movement, pre bubble, table lift, forced cooling cycle and finally extraction. A single cycle start button controls the lot.
Finally now have a custom trimmer to the side of the machine, and trim the previous molding while in cycle.
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