Hi there! My name is Nick, and I have just signed up to be a member at VHS! I have two passions that brought me into your space; the first is leathercraft, which is a hobby I picked up during quarantine. I’ve made a few projects in my apartment, but some of the requirements of the craft have had me branch out and look for some space to work (which, through my friend Mike, is how I found VHS!). I’ve had a tour of the space and it looks fantastic! I mostly have all of my own tools and equipment, but there are a lot of parts of the shop I’d love to learn more about, for example: the wood shop, the laser cutter, and the electronics bench.
My second passion is Star Wars costumes, and more specifically, Boba Fett. I scratch built a costume out of mostly matte board many years ago, and more recently updated it with some professionally made soft parts, but this year I’m very much looking forward to taking it to the next level and making it as screen accurate as possible. I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about electronics, and vacuum forming, for this purpose!
Thank you so much for having me as a new member, and I look forward to meeting you all throughout the next few months!
Hi Nick, welcome to VHS!
Paging @Cantina_Dude re: star wars costuming, @yeungx and @daza re: cosplay, and @mike re: vacuum forming.
If you’re not on Slack yet, dm me your email and I can add you, and then you’ll want to join the #woodworking, #laser, and #electronics channels. Have a browse through the other channels while you’re there and see what else strikes your fancy!
We have a small vacuum former, and there are some plans in the ether to build a larger former that’s capable of doing costume pieces. (The standard criteria is “big enough for a storm trooper breastplate” but that might have to be adjusted for Mandalorian armour… I’m not personally up to date on that fandom, so I’d have to defer to your expertise there… ) I built a fairly aggressive vacuum storage setup back at Protospace, and we’re set up to build a version of that here as well. I think we may be approaching critical mass of interest to get things moving on the big vacuum former project…
The new vacuuform is the Vaquform DT2. Check out the wiki here: tool:vaquform_dt2 [Vancouver Hack Space]
The wiki contains a link to the manual, and its quite an easy product to use. Plastic can be ordered locally or direct from Vaquform (though their shipping isn’t cheap to Canada).
To get ‘certified’ to use it, just read the manual that is linked on the tool page. It is a fairly easy tool to use, completely self-contained (no external vacuum, etc), and pretty darn simple to operate.
If you agree to share nice photos of what you do, you can use a couple sheets of the hackspace’s plastic cache which is HIPS 0.5mm while it lasts (should be stored with the former). Please keep it to a maximum of a couple sheets so we can get a nice variety of marketing shots with it :).
We are excited to meet you when we can, and look forward to seeing what you make!
Glad you made it on here, @nparry88! @Metal_Janet, I’m the “Mike” Nick referred to in his post, so we’ve already been diving deep into chatting about all things Star Wars costuming for a few years now! 
I look forward to working with this ever expanding group in developing our vacuum forming capabilities at VHS! 
PS, one idea around size limitations is to slice your bucks (forms) up so that edges land on natural seams, then you can build larger parts through assembly of multiple smaller pulls.
Thanks a lot for the info! I’ll read through that manual ASAP!
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