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Thermoforming Process Details

10:29
12:43
15.3K views

At 10:29 in

How they Build the Worlds Toughest Trailer

What happens here

Inside the thermoforming area, Don elaborates on the functionality of the enormous machine. He explains that it operates in three phases simultaneously: loading/unloading, heating in the oven (which contains 2,080 heated ceramic elements), and molding/cooling. The machine heats the large polymer sheets until they are pliable, then plungers press the softened material into molds, and vacuum suction ensures a precise shape. Finally, a cooling system quickly sets the plastic. Don emphasizes the significant investment in these custom-designed molds, each tailored for different trailer sizes.

Goal: Provide an in-depth explanation of how the large thermoforming machine operates and produces trailer components.

Tools and materials

  • Molds — Shaping the heated polyethylene sheets into specific trailer body designs
  • Polyethylene Sheets — Raw material fed into the thermoforming machine

What they say

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here you can see into the oven so that's the oven [Music] good rest when it comes out of the oven it's drooping about four or five feet that's how hot is it so then it comes into this mold these plungers come down and the cooling shut down starts to cool the thing down as soon as the park goes in there so they can take a set and then this is also club for air so it hits vacuum you can see all the air storage the vacuum here so that's all those ridges get pulled in tight if you want to manufacturers right yep but we're we're alone in this one because the size of the investment gets into the many many millions of dollars and I'm not seeing somebody won't do it but just for this part of it oh yeah just for this one component after the entire and each one is molds there's one for every size trailer it's extremely I was just gonna ask him like well not once can't be one size fits all so there's a mold there smaller mold so bigger mold so you forklift these so you forklift these switch them around that way though yeah you can see that they come out of there okay okay huh well that's interesting so building an indestructible bat doesn't do a whole lot of good if the framework underneath it falls apart on you but they can't build the frame for the trailer out of the same material that they build the bed out of the trailer so they use the next best thing to build the framework and that's aluminum so every component on a flow trailer underneath it is built out of the highest quality aluminum that they have available all right you guys

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