How to make a plastic torispherical dome?

[cklow01]

Originally Posted by One of Many Torispherical domes from metal might be readily available for about $100usd. One done from plastic is going to take some time to create the tooling and find someplace to get it formed, trimmed to size, and ready for testing. If you do not have much time to find access and complete either portion of the tooling or plastic forming process, you have nothing to work with. As an alternative option, you might even find a vessel tank end cap to use as a die to form your plastic one on. Do your theoretical answers require a specific material strength? Can that theory be scaled to suit what you end up with, or is the dome shape of your own design that you expect to test prove your pre-calculated theory based on a torisphere? Would laying up fiberglass cloth and resin work? In the US, $100 might get you between 1- 2 hours of a professionals shop time. I'd say those with experience that could make this as a custom plastic cap for you may have 1-2 days of labor to do the die and at least 1/2 day setting up and forming it. A minimum of 12hrs shop time blows your budget here in the States. Your only choice is to find out what that 12hrs might cost you if you do find a plastics shop in your home town. Doing it on your own? You will need to locate a plastic sheet supplier and find out how many 1cm x 50cm sqaure blanks of plastic $100 will buy. How many of those can you afford to waste trying to get a usable one? PVC forms nicely and is one of the cheaper ones. I see this taking some networking on your part to find the plastic sheet supplier, who may know a place that thermal forms and those that thermal form know who makes thermal forming tools. DC

If I want to buy a ready made metal torispherical dome, where can I get it? Can it be purchased online?


The material strength does not have to be specific because it is just a value to substitute into my theretical equation.

Can I make the dome wilth clay( it will become a solid dome) and do the fiberglass cloth and resin work on it to make a shape of torispheroid and use that to do vacuum forming?

You have really given me a lot of info, thanks for that.

[Stu_M3]

Why not use a cad system to create a solid model and then use a rapid prototype sevice such as "materialise" to make it. i just recently had a prototype ring shaped component made by this method it cost £70 made in nylon.You can find details of rapid prototyping on the materialise web site. but there are many other companies.
Stu

[cklow01]

Originally Posted by Stu_M3 Why not use a cad system to create a solid model and then use a rapid prototype sevice such as "materialise" to make it. i just recently had a prototype ring shaped component made by this method it cost £70 made in nylon.You can find details of rapid prototyping on the materialise web site. but there are many other companies. Stu

Can rapid prototyping produce an object about 40 CM as well? Thanks.

[Stu_M3]

Yes, one company we have used can produce large laser sintered prototypes.Have a look at their website might give you some ideas.
http://www.3trpd.co.uk/
you will probably have similar companies in the U.S.