Using a 220V rod element to heat the plastic, therefore heat would be applied via radiation.
Not sure if a hot air gun would be as effective as a heating element, i have considered quartz and ceramic however.
lastly, the pump is to be as small as possible while being able to have enough...
Thank you, I will update those and try to provide more information and some of my work completed thus far. Its for a university mechanical design project, I wasn't sure which topic that would fall under?
So far I have determined the evacuation time, a basic heat transfer between the heating element and plastic sheet, and a hold down force of the forming bed.