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I've been working on making a pickup winder based on a cordless drill and so far, so good. But I have come to a stand still on that waiting on parts and according to tracking, I won't have them until Monday July 24.

To fill the time gap, I came up with a related project. I was thinking "what am I going to use for pickup covers?". This lead me to DIY low suction vacuum forming machines and after reading a few articals and watching a few YouTubes, I came up with my own design.

I decided to make mine very small. Why? Well, first of all, I am not going to be making stage props, just small simple parts. But also, Being retired and on a fixed income, economics played a more important roll. You see, the plastic used in vacuum forming costs on average about $5 for a 12" x 12" x .040" thick piece.

My mini vacuum former has a platen of 5" x 5" and a frame that holds a 6" x 6" piece of plastic. $1.25 mistakes are a lot more palatable than $5 mistakes on an 11" x 11" platen.

The platten base is made from 3/8" x 2-1/2" radiata pine. This was meant for a short scale bass box guitar but...

I just used butt joints - glued and screwed. The top of the platen is some scrap pegboard I had but I drilled 4mm holes in between the existing holes.

On one side of the platen, I used a 1-1/4" hole saw to accept the hose from my little Hang-Up shop vac. Unfortunately, the actual hole it makes is 1-3/8" dia. so, to solve this, I could have just wrapped some duct tape around the end of the vac hose but, I found that a plastic medicine vial was perfect for making an adapter - which I epoxyed in.

Around the platen bass I attached some 3/4" x 1/2" poplar scrap I had and put 3/4" x 1/4" foam weather stripping for the bottom frame half to meet and keep flush with the platen top.

Unseen in the photos is a 4-1/4" x 4-1/4" piece of 1/4" MDF glued in to make a bottom for the platen.

The frame halves are also made from radiata pine. I ripped the pine down the center to give me (roughly) 3/8" x 1-1/4" strips and made the top frame half with all four sides of this dimension. The bottom frame half has two parallel sides 3/8" x 1-1/4" and two parallel sides 3/8" x 2-1/2", this is to accommodate the guide post dowels.

The frame openings are 5-1/16" square so nothing binds up. I rubbed paraffin on the dowels so the frame slides up and down smoothly.

I spent about $10 on the hardware:

1 - 4 pack of 1-1/2" x 1-1/2 corner braces
1 - 4 pack of 2-1/2" x 2-1/2 corner braces (these larger ones were over kill)
8 - 1" long bolts
8 - wing nuts
5/8" dowel (under a dollar for 3' @ Walmart)

I used a scrap piece of 3/4" MDF to mount everything on.

Enough talk, here are the pictures:

I did make a test run, it was a fail but encouraging. The plastic I used was not meant for vacuum forming, I think it is an opaque defuser for fluorescent light panels. I thought it may be useful for pickguard material but it is very brittle and chips too easy. It's about 1/16" thick.

When I heated it with a heat gun, it never did sag like the plastic in the videos despite heating it for 3-4 min. but it did look like it was going to blast a hole through it so I just went for it and pushed it down over the "mold". Since it wasn't forming around the mold very tightly, I continued using the heat gun but it just wasn't going to turn out as hoped.

I am fairly confident if I use the proper type plastic that is a little thinner, this little thing could work well for my needs but I do think I'm going to add some more holes in the platen top.