Is making custom acrylic molds (affordable) possible?

[a ronin]

Ok, I'm hoping anyone who has read this have seen the movies Minority Report and/or Solaris w/ George Clooney.

My idea for a mod is encasing my LCD display in a frame/housing similiar to that found in those two movies. It would have translucent frames and the back can be exposed to viewing the innards. In Minority Report, when the display was turned on, the edge of the display luminated. With cold cathode tube, this would be possible to integrate into the frame/bezel. I'm just wondering if anyone has seen a shop that will do custom acrylic molds. This would facilitate the possibility to do many cool and novel lighting mods within the case.

Right now that's my ambition. Don't exactly how how hard that is, but it seems possible.

 

[Ruckus]

I would love to know how to do it myself not your mod but the acrylic molding.

 

[_Sin_]

maybe if you had a relative that can create almost anything with acrylic...

wait a second!

 

[FLECOM]

man i cant for the life of me find it but there was a great link out there on how to make your own vaccume plastic molder thingie... a bunch of guys making storm-trooper outfits made it or something like that...

 

[JiveBologna]

Originally posted by FLECOM
man i cant for the life of me find it but there was a great link out there on how to make your own vaccume plastic molder thingie... a bunch of guys making storm-trooper outfits made it or something like that...

Gotcha covered.

DH2 - Definitive HOW TO Costume and Prop Building

More specifically:

Building a Vacuumform Table

and The Basics of Vacuumforming

 

[Ice Czar]

Vacuum Forming makes alot of sense for a limited production run
Injection Molding for mass production
but for prototyping, why not just machine the plex and then polish it?

Its just a little more work than building the buck and less expensive overall.



JiveBologna, thanx for the link

http://www.duke.edu/~mtb3/castingmanual/titlepage.html

you could also consider other casting tecniques

for instance w\ clear resins
http://www.alumilite.com/

 

[phasmatis_nox]

I like to advocate polycarbonate rather than acrylic. Use it.

This post was not sponsored by GE Plastics, Inc. Any funds the poster may or may not have recieved from GE Plastics is completely unrelated.