Vacuum Forming
At Quality Plastics, Inc., vacuum forming is our core production process: we heat a rigid thermoplastic sheet, drape it over a precision tool, and draw the material tight to the surface with vacuum for accurate, repeatable parts.
Once formed, parts are trimmed to final shape—removing excess and adding features like holes, slots, and cutouts. We do this primarily with 5-axis CNC routing, and complement it with laser cutting, sawing, and steel-rule die cutting to match the geometry and volume of the job.
Most production tooling is machined from aluminum billet to speed processing and improve dimensional stability; for very large parts we may use engineered hardwoods or high-temperature fiberglass. All tooling is built in-house from your supplied CAD models, which shortens iteration and keeps design intent intact.
We form a wide range of materials—such as acrylic and impact-modified acrylic, ABS (including FR grades), Kydex, TPO, polypropylene, polycarbonate (including FMR-coated), PETG, PVC, styrene, TPU, and polyethylene—so your part can be optimized for clarity, impact, heat, or cost.
Our vacuum-formed components support applications across gaming, equipment and automation, lawn & garden, medical, and law-enforcement markets. If you’re moving from prototype to production, we can pair forming with trimming, assembly, and finishing for a turnkey path to consistent parts.
After a plastic part is formed (e.g., vacuum- or drape-formed), CNC trimming removes the excess flange and cuts in holes, slots, windows, and edges to final size. A high-speed spindle follows a CAM toolpath so features are consistent from part to part.
We have both 3 and 5 Axis CNC Trimming capabilities. For instance, 3 axis works on a typical x, y, and z plane whereas 5 axis timmings can also tilt and rotate along 2 additional axes as needed.
