One of the companies in Mexico that I do contracting for is the largest thermo forming operation down there. I used to work in thermo forming engineering back in the day so I'm very familiar with the process. With the correct grade resin sheet and a good solid process with enough vacuum you can make anything fairly quickly. Average time from oven to vacuum is around 6 minutes for most of the large truck composites they make down in MexicoDo you guys remember the Vacu-form toy? It had a lightbulb that would heat up little sheets of plastic and then you flip them over a mold and sucked out the air.
I think they made little spiders and bugs and such things. I never had one of those but I saw some guys on the Internet doing this on a large scale basis with a vacuum table. They were making car fenders.
I think that could be a hot cool way to make real disk wheels.
I’ve seen a number of smooth disc wheels, that were just laid up from carbon fiber and resin.
I also saw them make rocket nose cones and other parts out of composite thread and resin.
But that’s a very slow procedure when you could just take a sheet of plastic, warm it up to a certain temperature, and then press/suck it over a mold.
I thought about it for wheels but the market is just not that big for it to justify making a buck for the vacuum tables. Not that I don't think the guys in Mexico would probably be willing to help