Pengaruh Variasi Temperatur Terhadap Pembentukan Polycarbonate Pada Proses Vacuum Forming

Plastic is a material that is often found in everyday life. Because it has several advantages of being malleable, lightweight, corrosion resistant, as a good electrical insulator, some plastics have transparent physical properties. This is very useful for the use of plastic as a wrapping material for a product, therefore various studies have been carried out to determine the characteristics of a plastic material with heat treatment, and to produce a manufacturing tool. One method of forming by heat treatment is thermoforming and the simple one is vacuum forming. This method is carried out by giving a heat treatment to the plastic sheet until the plastic becomes soft and then molded into the desired mold by applying vacuum pressure. In this study, using a plastic sheet with the type of polycarbonate (PC) measuring 500 mm x 300 mm with a thickness of 1.5 mm. For the vacuum pressure is determined at a constant pressure of -0.39 bar. And to print plastics with optimal quality, temperature variations are used which are varied into 3 temperature variations, namely: 155.5°C, 160.5°C and 165.5°C. The results showed that the optimal temperature for printing polycarbonate plastic with a thickness of 1.5 mm is 160.5°C with a vacuum pressure of -0.39 bar. Key words: thermoforming, vacuum forming and polycarbonate (PC)