I tried my best to remember the in process shots as I built a vacuform machine last week.  I was less successful at documenting the process that I was at making the device.  Here are some of those pictures and a play by play of the build.

Picking up trash from the side of the road has been a regular activity of mine for lots of years - you can find great project parts in the remnants from a garage clean out, a spring clean, or - tragic and true - the death of a crazy hoarder.  I found this 1950's era bathroom vanity on the bottom of a renovation trash pile.

I used the self standing mirror as a second mirror for giving myself haircuts until the glass was smashed - perhaps a falling incident or maybe we needed to hit it with a hammer - there's no telling.  Anyhow, I ended up with a nice metal cabinet that was in too good of shape to toss.

Upon receiving a bread maker from another sidewalk giveaway I decided to combine the heating element from the bread maker with the vanity to make a plastic forming toy.

After several small scale tests of varying success, I attempted a practical achevement for the vacuform - a plastic embossed license plate like we use for movies (and which cost about $60 a pair).  The tests on the larger scale didn't go so well.  I prompty decided that i needed a bigger hammer and went to the hardware store at 5 minutes til close and purchased myself two stove burners.

The two burners did a much better job of giving me an even heat and took only about 45 seconds to get up to temp, but I was still having problems getting the license plates to work.  Only after 2 more tests I realized the variable truly at fault - the vacuum.  The plastic was not being sealed at the edges and thus the vacuum couldn't gain enough suction.  I added some foam weather stripping and produced my first embossed license plate.  You see it finished here with some cut vinyl added for the color.