Ok I am new to this and have been reading the forum for the past 2 days as a guest and it seams this is the place to go for information…. I am bad at name but I like what the guy did when he made his 2’x4’ machine to do signs… anyway I have been toying around with building one for a couple years and now seams to be the time to do it as my business is starting to take off…as of right now I do fiberglass molds for the Chevy luv truck and will be getting into the early imports as time goes on… I am a one man show and parts some times take 3 days to make one a mold is done and I was thinking there has to be a better way or faster way to do some of the parts I make… I found a part I wanted to make and noticed it looked like it was vacuum formed (a cab visor) for a Chevy luv so it got me thinking maybe I can do this and save time and maybe money in the long run… ill attach some pics of what I want to make… my first thought was to reskin the dashes for the truck but I could never find the materials I was looking for… but here is what I want to build… the machine needs to be a 4’x8 size to accommodate the lager stuff I want to form, I have come up with what I think I will need so correct me if I am wrong… I need 3 60 gallon tanks to do the fast form ( will use 2 to do the fast vacuum and the 3rd to do the hard pull? I need a vacuum pump of at least 21 cfm but would like more in the line of around 30 cfm and about 25 to 27 inches of vacuum. I was going to use nichrome coil heaters for the oven , I figure I need 70 feet was going to space the coils about 3 in apart? Is to close or to far apart? Should I run 1 pump for all 3 tanks or should I run 2 pumps 1 for the fast pull and one for the hard pull? I didn’t want to spend 10k or more on a machine and I think I can build this for around $1500 with I have in the shop laying around already … here are some pics, the first is a vacuum forned visor and the rest are some part I would like to duplicate… also some fender flares I have seen was a thin wall ABS I think…
the blu and white where vacuum formed i was told... the dash is what i would like to recover in the right material



these black flares where vacuum formed with a thin wall i think maybe less then 1/16 the cab visors where i think 1/8


so i know this can be done from the research i have done the question is am i on the right track what am i missing or what are your thoughts ... thanks , Troy @ Luv Truckin'