Turn a pizza oven into a Sheet oven

On this tutorial I will show you how we do plastic sheets with a pizza oven and a Cardboard/PET press.

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8 steps

1 Refurbishing the oven and PID

We got an old pizza oven for free from a local restaurant. Then we sand it down, cleaned it and added a PID controller. The thermometer is in the middle of the oven.

2 Making the mold

We created a mold out of square steel tubes. Here is important to do a mold the size of the oven, but you can also use simple bread trays. I think the magic and complexity of good sheets lays here in this step. We keep making new molds that are far better. but in this case we use steel that was laying around. For next molds: - We will use aluminum sheets - We will add a frame to "limit" the compression width

3 The process I

Now, we add vaseline to the mold and afterwards we add around 3 kg of shredded HDPE and put the mold lid.

4 The process II

Now we turn on the oven and regulate the temperature depending on the plastic. We got good results with 160°C, but remember, this was measurred in the middle of the oven.

5 The process III

We let it heat for 40-50 minutes and then take it to the press. We use a press that is made to press PET and Cardboard at the local recycling center (www.huertoromaverde.org).

6 The result: Sheets

Here are the first 3 sheets we made,

7 If you want to know more

Check out the first part of the video where I show how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxkcffQD3eQ&t=131s

8 Try it yourself

Plastic Sheets are very versatile to create different products, we mainly use them after cutting them in the CNC mill. But we also have cut them by hand and made boxes, signs and even a skateboard. Try it at home and share it with the community,

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