How do they make a Bubble top???

A local high school teacher has made a couple full scale visual copies of WWII aircraft and sold them to museums. His son (a local sheriff's deputy at the time) told me he got the canopy made by a company in California and that he could have made it himself, but wanted it to be optically correct.

Does making it at home produce an optically correct bubble?

 

Not a problem for Show Cars.

 

One of the mags this month, has an article on making bubbles.

 

the bubble on my "Roswell Rod" is a home sky light! just do a search on google and you'll find a host of places that make basic size bubbles & domes.
have one made is big bucks
FRITZ

 

i never even thought about those!

 

Find someone localy who makes sky lights for building's. They will have all the stuff except the buck that goes around the outside for your correct shape. They are made exactley the same way.

 

I would think that a oven at any local powder coater would be perfect.

I powder coat at my work and it is very easy to control the heat and it’s very consistent because of the fan circulating the air in the oven.

 

That is what Oddball Kustoms used for the roof on their Orange Model A.
It didn't need a lot of stretching, but the concept is the same.

 

I have done considerable vacuum forming and much of the information here is incorrect and you will be ruining some very costly Plexiglas sheeting if you try them.
A sheet must be completely and evenly heated to the correct temperature for the material being used and then formed into a vacuum box with a control valve hooked to a air tank then hooked to the chamber below the sheet.I mean a big vacuum tank. The vacuum box has to be strong not collapse under the pressure. A large sign company usually has a vacuum forming machine that takes a sheet up under a bank of heaters and when it has reached the proper temp, it is lowered down to the vacuum table. The air is sucked out by cracking the valve and introducing the vacuum. The depth of the draw is controlled by the valve.
Optic clarity is dependent on whether the vacuum stretches the plastic to a different thickness.
My two cents.

 

Vacuum forming is nice, but I'd rather be blown.

 

I know my pictures suck but this is what I have , Its a vacum mold machine it has a heater on one side and a vacume on the other you put a thin plastic in the frame put it over the heater for about 1 minute then you flip the frame over and flip the switch from heat to vac and whatever the item laying on the vac surfice is it makes a mold of it I have used it to make liners for gun boxes, knives ,wrenches and other things but if you was to reverse the fan for the vac you could probably do the opposite.