Jon, sorry if I sounded like I was biting your head off... I appreciate the "safety first" thing, and do that myself sometimes.
I just wanted to make sure that people know that vacuum forming can be pretty safe, even for not-very-handy-or-expert people, if they avoid things like messing with 120V current and breathing styrene monomer fumes; there are safer alternatives. (Like using a prefab heating device & using water putty instead of Bondo.)
Too many of my grownup friends never got into making things, and don't even own an electric saw. Maybe a drill, but no saw. They can't make even simple things for themselves, which I find pretty sad. If they can't find pre-built in a store, or can't afford the store-bought version, they do without. Yuck.
I'd hate to see an enthusiastic kid discouraged from making cool stuff. (Especially learning to make their own tools to make cool stuff. I think that's the kind of educational and enabling thing that kids should do more of.)
It's true, the auxiliary tools can be kind of scary. I'm at more risk from my razor-sharp scoring tool than from my Dremel, though.
(Another safety warning: don't breathe the fumes from cutting plastic with a Dremel. It generally melts the plastic a fair bit, and burns it a little. Burning plastics give off toxic fumes that properly heating them doesn't. Don't use a Dremel on plastic if you're not going to make sure the fumes are blowing away from you. If you're smelling it, that's bad. And if you're not going to be pretty careful about fumes, don't even heat most plastics; stick to relatively safe ones like styrene and PETG. Avoid Sintra and other PVCs, urethanes, etc.)
