The goal of this assignment was to use the vacuum former. I wanted to package an action figure and a banana together in plastic. I also wanted packaging that could be opened and closed, so I decided to make bulges on the bottom piece of plastic and then let the top piece cover the bulges to make a snap seal. The bulges were made by using the vacuum former over two WD40 caps. Here are the caps places on the base of the vacuum former.
The caps have now been lowered into the vacuum former.
Next a piece of PET G was placed over the opening, and the heaters were turned on.
After a couple of minutes, the plastic was sagging, as seen here. At this point, I raised the caps and turned on the vacuum to form the plastic around them.
The vacuum former and the hot plastic combined to warp the plastic caps. At this point, I decided not to package the platic action figure, lest he melt.
After vacuum forming over the caps, I cut the piece of PET G so that it could fit through the hole shown above and lie flat on the base. Without the cutting off the edges, the piece of plastic would not be flat. (In this picture, the banana is not yet inside the plastic.)
Next, a second piece of PET G was formed over the first piece and the banana, imprisoning the banana. Because the caps had melted, the tabs they left bowed in some. Because of this, the package could not be opened and closed as intended.