which is harder than it looks

so these things get stamped out of a section of plate then?

or into

Lol i made a replica juul in solidworks

it's soft trim so the actual part is made of basically plastic, fiberglass, and a covering material like vinyl or cloth

you take sheet material and compress it into a shape

then trim

how is it compressed into that shape?

with a press

you make two sides of a mold and put the sheet material in between

then squish them together

the sheet material being the plastic/fiberglass/vinyl or cloth combination you mentioned?

correct

finished parts look like this

interesting, i wouldve thought for fiberglass you would lay it inside the mold, fill it with resin, vacuum suck it and then let it sit till its dry

that's thermoset molding

aha

which is popular as well

but thermoform is faster

vrom vrom

in many cases it takes hours or even a day or more to cure themoset parts

which is why one of our customers had to basically shut down for two years and rethink their tooling

i can imagine that takes a long time

how does it work for thermoform molding?

how come it's faster?

you just heat the material in an oven, take it out of the oven and form it, let it cool

the fiberglass is pre-impregnated with polypropylene or other plastics

so it's just a sheet of plastic/fiberglass

ahh cool

the fiberglass layup you're referring to is good too but it's used for diff purposes

these are just trim panels that don't need much structural strength

i came across it for windmill blades

funny enough we apparently had a project for windmill blades a while back

before i worked here

the tools are the biggest we've ever made

hah, can you still put that in an oven to do thermoforming?

yes

seems kinda big

it is