Can anyone help me with vacuum-forming?

You can also consider this clay from laguna Clay Company called Oven Bake 2. It is like regular clay, but when baked in the oven, it becomes hard as stone. It's great, downer, is that at Michael's they only carry 2lb boxes, you can get larger. It does come out rough, and I am unfamiliar with vaccum molding, so I'm not sure how the dimples bumps in the clay would effect the molding itself.

EV

 

to all you HARDCORE COSTUMERS that vaccuumform styrene and do not smell anything, "Your nasal cavities are shot, shot I say." You guys have sniffed one too many Sharpie markers and your smelling senses have been deaded by it.

I am semi-lucky to live with a smell sensitive girlfriend and she can smell my vacuumforming of even one sheet of styrene when she walks in the front door. She's nice though and tolerates my hobby, as long as she does not have to smelll the fumes for too long and I air the house out for a couple of hours.

Heating up any plastic gives off fumes. Plain and simple. you are causing a chemical reaction to occur to make the plastic pliable.

I will admit that the fumes given off for a few sheets of styrene will probably not affect your health a whole lot, but, long term exposure to these fumes is deadly. I cannot stress the importance of a WELL VENTILATED ROOM enough. Please open all the windows and use a fan to blow air out the nearest window.

It's best to be more safe than sorry.

I'd hate for someone who is really sensitive to air born particles to accidentally have an allergic reaction to the heating of styrene just because the costumers on this board did not emphasize the proper safety precautions that one should take when dealing with higher level costuming techniques like vacuumforming.

 

I was wondering also, because I've worked in Femo which is a polymer plastic and that admits a lot of fumes, I have to put it on the porch so that the whole house doesn't feel heady.

I would think with baking sheets made of similar make up it would smell. Thanks for the secondary input, because we're going to do some armor experiments over the summer, because of the ventalation aspect, since it would freeze us out to do it now. See how this is done had given me other ideas, so I'm stoaked I read this thread. Thanks guys and gals!