Hello, everyone. John here. I'm super excited to introduce my latest project, the Vaquform™. It's a new kind of production tool which will bring true mass-production capability to your desktop. As a designer and product developer, I use a variety of fabrication tools and techniques in my work, including three which I consider to be complementary to one another: 3D printing, CNC machining and the rather exotic, vacuum forming. I've seen the first two technologies migrate to the desktop in the past decade, while vacuum forming has yet to morph into a proper desktop tool.
A couple of months ago a small vacuum former appeared on Kickstarter. The campaign was wildly successful, raising more than 10 times its goal of $50,000. I took it as evidence of people's interest in vacuum forming, a technology I have an expertise in.
I've designed and built quite a few vacuum forming machines for clients over the years, but all of them had been meant for factory use. The challenge for me was in trying to reduce industrial machinery into a form that's light and compact, while also trying to make it affordable and easy to use. After months of work, of trial and error, I finally have a product that I'm proud of. And I'll be launching it through a Kickstarter campaign of my own.
That's still a couple of months down the road, but things have already gotten super busy. I'm finalizing the engineering, talking to potential partners, and auditing suppliers. I want to make sure everything is in its proper place before I start taking people's hard-earned money.
I have a product that works. The image you see on the top of this page is a photo of an actual prototype. Developing the product is the easy part. Between now and launch is when I get busy working on the hard part―developing the company that will bring Vaquform™ to desktops, to sit right beside 3D printers and CNC machines, wherever there are tinkerers, designers and makers.
John Truman Tan
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