I want to try making a bubble lens cover for a display enclosure. I’m thinking about a simple sandwich of sheet metal flashing with a center window to clamp a sheet of 2mm acrylic. Then place a nichrome wire heating element under the exposed acrylic. The heat will rise and gravity will deform the window to create the bubble.
I could probably get by with a sketchy setup that wraps the nichrome wire around nails in a wooden frame for a one off. Alternatively, I could probably use mica sheets, like a typical domestic toaster, to build a frame that the wire wraps around.
What I’m curious about is if labs have some better goto setup to create custom heating elements. Is there some kind of erector or Lego like set of cheap hardware people use for creating custom heating apparatuses? I’m thinking like a set of ceramic standoffs and a configurable base plate or other basic hardware. Like if you wanted to automate a medium size production run of something and needed a few different size heating elements, how would you build them?
I second vacuum forming for this application. The shape you want is tailor made for that method.