Vacuum Forming Machine Tools

CAD (Design) Software Fusion 360
1

My brother makes chocolates and has bought himself a vacuum forming machine. I am trying to help make some tools for the former.

I’m reaching out for insight from any experience that might be out there on good practice and what to avoid.

We’re in experimental mode. I’ve modelled a chocolate bar in F360 and milled it out of building insulation (Kingspan, I had some kicking about that I used my track saw on), maple and tooling board. This was my first adventure with tooling board, it’s great to machine, but expensive.

I have milled the bar with 7 Deg draft. But I couldn’t resolve a way to easily do that with the pretend logo from a SVG file. Tapered extrusions, lofting between marginal different size logo files were unsuccessful.

So aside from general vacuum forming top tips, anyone now I might approach drafting a 7 Deg contour around the logo?

I also have vcarvepro. So might look at the next.

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2

That’s strange — I’ve never had a problem making tapered extrusions in Fusion.

I’m guessing it must have something to do with extruding from an SVG. Can you do a square extrude/cut from the SVG into the 3D model? And then follow that with a tapered extrude, using the “floor” of the 3D logo as the profile to be extruded/cut outward?

3

Or use a tapered end mill to machine it?

Pat

4

Interesting. I’ll try that.

It is the quirkiness of using an imported svg

5

I was wondering that. I have an Armana tapered ball nose of about 6 degrees. Do a contour following the bottom edge. Maybe even fake a flat tapered end mill and trave the bottom edge.

I’ll give it a go

6

We had a chocolate manufacturing business and made our own custom candy bar molds for corporations to pass at conventions. The process using .030 PETG for vacuuforming worked great. I ordered full sheets and had them cut to the size needed for cheap shipping and low cost. As you noted, a taper is critical to allow the chocolate to slip out of the mold. If you can’t find a suitable tapered bit you can probably have a machine shop take a standard bit and modify it or call Cody at cadencemfgdesign.com and see if he would be interested in a play project. He manufactures a lot of bits that people use.

7

Thank you for your insight.

Do you think I will need a taper on the walls of the indented logo which is 2mm deep or is it shallow enough that I can get away with it?

8

I have managed to get a draft on the logo in F360.

  • Import svg (scale to 4/3) and unfix
  • Create offset to SVG curves (in my example I offset by about 0.2-0.3mm)
  • Convert the offset curves to construction lines
  • Create a construction plane offset to the SVG sketch plane at depth of logo
  • Project the offset lines into a sketch on the construction plane
  • Loft between the profiles
  • Make the offsets and construction plane offset user parameters.

Tricky to see in this image, but it is there;

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