I have little to no experience with electronics. However I would like that to change. I have a love of building and making things.
My newest project is to make a Vacuum Forming Machine. A tutorial I found through instructables.com shows how to make one using the heating components of an old toaster oven.

As you can see in the photos, I have disassembled this old Toastmaster Toaster oven. However I am not sure how to continue on. I do not want to break anything. I have to get the four rods out along with any wires needed to transfer to the oven box of what I am making. I was hoping you guys can help me out and guide me through the necessary steps? I believe it is a simple task even a beginner with no prior knowledge or experience can take on, I just need to be shown what to do.

Thanks

 

Well, you could start by showing close up pictures of the heating element connectors on both sides of the sheet metal. I assume you want to repurpose the heaters for your vacuform machine. If they are press-fit you might want to keep the metal sides - got dremel?

 

Yes that is what I will intend to do with the heaters. They seem to sit in pretty loose to the walls and can slide out if the end white caps were not in the way blocking it. I took a few close ups of all sides here.

 

As far as what it should look like, here are reference photos I am following from the instructions. This is how they should be installed in the box. Here is one of the box and then with the elements inside after

 

1) Loose fitting is necessary to avoid thermal expansion from breaking things.
2) It looks like your connectors are spot welded because solder can not survive those temperatures. Do NOT break those connections! Cut the wire several inches away from the heating element and attach to the wires at a distance.
3) Notice the 200F high temperature wire. Continue with that safety measure.
4) It looks like all the control goodies are right there where you can re-use them.
5) Be skeptical of instructables.com. Come here for real professional advice.

Anything else?

 

I agree with #12 though I'd preserve as much of the wire assemblies as you can. You can always cut it later if you have to. Are the end caps in 2 pieces? They had to install the heating elements so I'd look to reverse the process. However, they may not easily come apart so dremeling the metal may be your best bet. On the other hand, the metal may be nice to keep as part of the eventual mounting.

As to instructable.com and other maker sites. Those are great ways to build something that works - for maybe a couple of times. Definitely be skeptical of their advice.

By the way, I built a vacuform machine a long time ago and used a hacked electric frying pan as the heat source. Worked surprisingly well though would have liked something a little bigger. Still, I had a lot of fun with it. Looks like yours will be 24" x 18" or so which is pretty good.

 

Yeah the interior of the box is about 14"x14'. I am insulating the wood with cement boards. I would love a larger one but going with how it is shown. I went with the toaster oven idea because it seemed like it could be pretty simple. Also i just had an old one stored on my shelf I was given. Initially I was just gonna leave it in tact and do smaller vacuum forming projects. But when i came across this specific instructable, i jumped at the opportunity to not only build something i have always wanted, but also make it a new build project in general tackling something fresh.

The end caps look to be one solid piece each. So I think I will just cut up the body of the oven. I snipped thru it like butter with my small shears when I removed the power cable from the back.

 

I will mess around with the placement in the box. Maybe no electric work has to necesarrily be done after all. I was hoping to have it wired to a different kind of switch and not the toaster oven dials but me being a noob, I have no idea how to go about it. What wires going where, what isnt needed, etc. I pretty blind to it all.

 

I was hoping to have it wired to a different kind of switch and not the toaster oven dials

I think you only have to consider where to place the temperature sensor and whether the controls have the right temperature range. The original temperature sensor might be useless because a vacu-form activity is very fast compared to cooking food. You might end up judging the right amount of heat by measuring time instead of temperature.

What do you know about this idea, @philba ?

 

You've got a bit of a problem, because the connections to the heating rods were welded onto the rod tails *after* the rods were installed in the oven cavity. Given what these rods do for a living, getting enough heat on a connection to soften it might be difficult. Cutting them out sounds like a messy PITA, but I can't think of an alternative. I tried to "unsolder" parts of a coffee maker using a 250 W Weller gun. Nope.

ak

 

I think you only have to consider where to place the temperature sensor and whether the controls have the right temperature range. The original temperature sensor might be useless because a vacu-form activity is very fast compared to cooking food. You might end up judging the right amount of heat by measuring time instead of temperature.

What do you know about this idea, @philba ?

The way a vacuform machine works is you heat a sheet of plastic in a sandwich style frame and when it starts to sag (you learn the right amount by trial an error) you drop it onto the platen that holds the form (called a plug, iirc) while simultaneously opening up the valve to the vacuum. The heating phase takes maybe a minute at full blast so no temperature control is needed. It's pretty bone-head simple.

The biggest challenge is building a heater box that will actually last. Thermoconcrete (think that's the wrong name, tho) is the best for that and that's what the instructables picture seems to have. I was going to build one with nichrome wire but life intervened and I never got around to it. Building a good platen is also a bit of a challenge. But overall, it's a fairly simple machine to build and it's easy to get very good results. This thread makes me want to build another one but I really have too many projects as it is.

 

Yea I am using a concrete board to insulate from the wood enclosure. This guy uses HardieBacker board, but when I got all my materials at Menards, they didnt carry that specific brand so I went with PermaBase, the guy at Mendards told me its basically the same thing. Here is a link to the instructable I am following. This guy I already knew about from making excellent quality props.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Building-a-Small-Format-Vacuumformer-from-an-Old-T/

This is where I am at now with the oven box construction. I am using a high temp furnace cement to seal the pieces of cement board in. Little did I know I would use the entire tube needing a second one.

 

I managed to get all the components out of the toaster oven in one piece. Now I just have to determine what I need to do next.