Vacuum Former from scratch

SummaryOK, My son (12) and I are working on a vacuum forming system from scratch. I'm pretty excited about it and want to put it out as a work in progress. We will post the final plans and files along with a list of do's and don'ts once we are making super cool armor and injection molds for weapons. We have a few designs we have been working on. One included the vacuum inside of the vacuum cavity. For that, we had the original Switch Housing. For that, we expected the wires to pass through the body of the former. We have decided to keep the vac outside of the former (So we can upgrade as we go) so we created the Ext Switch Housing 2 file. We also have some pretty simple feet, but our former is going to be 4' long, so we may add a secondary (middle) foot design to make sure it stays level. The main cavity of the former still has wet glue, and the first feet are on the printer as i type. I'll have more pics and (Hopefully) some super cool armor or something soon. I'd love to hear from anyone who has done this in the past so we can learn from past mistakes and nail this the first time.