In a very obtuse way this is the start of resurrecting my 100kW Induction Furnace - but the Vacuum Former is getting in the way and needs to be disposed of!
I bought this some years ago in not working condition - several of the ceramic enclosed heating elements were non-functional - and I gave it a bit of TLC, got it working fully, made a few bits with it, and then it was pushed to one side.
Storage hasn't been to kind to it cosmetically, so I brought it out of storage this morning to dust it down with a view to disposal, but first it now again needs a bit of TLC, this time to the cosmetics.
How does it work? Well simply put, a plastic sheet is clamped in a frame, heated for a set time by those nine ceramic heating elements, and then a pattern is raised up pushing the soft plastic roughly into shape, which is then enhanced by the inbuilt vacuum pump sucking the plastic into intimate contact with the plastic. Once cooled the pattern is dropped and the sheet taken out.
Patterns can be very simple - just blocks of wood, or quite complex. I was amused to see an identical machine at the Herstmonceaux observatory science park letting children make up their names using plastic notice board letters as the moulds.