Vacuum Forming Machine

A vacuum forming machine shapes a heated sheet of thermoplastic into a mold by sealing the softened sheet over the mold's cavity and then evacuating the air between the sheet and the mold with a vacuum pump, so atmospheric pressure presses the sheet down to take the mold's exact shape. The technique grew out of general thermoforming methods developed in the early twentieth century and became industrially significant in the 1950s as cheap, moldable thermoplastic sheet became widely available, since a vacuum former needs only a single-sided mold and comparatively low forming pressure compared with matched-mold or compression methods. Vacuum forming remains a common way to produce items such as plastic packaging trays, disposable cups, and large, thin-walled parts like vehicle interior panels and bathtub liners, where its low tooling cost matters more than the tighter dimensional precision of injection molding.