From what we can tell, it’s a fairly common activity to make tasty, curiously shaped chocolate treats with the Formbox. Have you ever wanted to eat a chocolate version of a friend or family member? What about some of your favorite terrain? What about a tool or cutlery? No? Us neither, but for this review, yes, yes, we have. And so have all our colleagues.

Using a combination of clever websites, photography, CAD software, and the office 3D printer squadron, we can hopefully make some detailed, stylish molds to pour chocolate into, set, and then eat. It really shouldn’t prove too difficult to do, and see if the Formbox can perform by adding a touch of personalization to a sweet treat, as well as another inch to the waistline.

THE TECH

There’s no real secret to what’s lurking underneath the body of the Mayku Formbox. Though it might look like a cross between a grill and a gas station, the Formbox is, in simple terms, a ceramic heater, a vertically movable tray, and a mesh for escaping air. A simple bit of tech and all the better for it.

What goes in the vertically movable tray, you ask? Well, plastic sheets actually, and there’s a fair selection you can choose from. Mayku provides you with its “Form” and “Cast” sheets to start with. Both of these sheets are 0.5mm thick, with the Form… formed from high-impact polystyrene while the cast sheets are made of food-safe PETG.

In case you didn’t work it out already, the different materials these sheets are made of essentially denote different uses, with the Form sheets more for product packaging or craft projects. In contrast, the cast sheets have a little more flex and a supposedly non-stick surface. That should make them perfect for chocolate, in theory. Oh, one extra plus point awarded to Mayku here as these sheets are both fully-recyclable, which is nice.

Here’s where it gets a little more interesting – you don’t have to use the sheets Mayku makes. You can use ABS, PS, PC, PP, PE, PVC and PMMA, which is definitely not a martial arts event, and definitely is Acrylic. The thickness of the materials will obviously be a factor here. Mayku says it has tested 0.3–1.5 mm, finding that to be the optimum range for materials, but creatives will naturally want to experiment and are encouraged to do so.

Naturally, the next sensible question will be about what you can put into your molds – actually, a fair few things. Of course, we’re going to be pouring chocolate into ours, but other edible things like ice and jelly work too. Mayku also mentions very inedible substances like jesmonite, plaster, concrete, and RTV silicone as being perfectly acceptable.

Resins won’t work, though, and neither will anything too hot for that matter. It probably goes without saying that placing your cast sheets into the oven or microwave will end in tears. You also shouldn’t try to make a mold out of anything too wet, too delicate, too squishy, or too living.

The heater is the top part of the Formbox. It can reach a temperature of over 337 °C , enough to make the plastic sheets get soft and droop towards the object you plan to mold. You pop one of these sheets into the tray, position it up under the heater – where it locks into place via the handles – and set the timer.

When sufficient floppiness has occurred, you give the tray (and the plastic sheet framed within) a good push down onto the mesh where your choice of not-living object is resting. As the tray hits the mesh, it comes into contact with a button activates your vacuum cleaner to start sucking, pulling all the air out from around your object, and forming the soft plastic around your object.

Oh yeah, you need a vacuum cleaner for this device to work. No vacuum, no party. Or, more accurately, no molds. Without a vacuum, this machine is just decorative, so make sure you have one on hand. Most standard vacuum cleaners should work as the Formbox comes with a universal adapter.

USABILITY

All of the controls are designed with ease of use in mind. There’s a timer to help you keep track of how long your plastic has been under the heater and a knob numbered 1 to 6 for the temperature. The bigger the number, the hotter it gets. How hot you need it to be and how long you need to grill your plastic sheet depends on the material you are using. For the “Cast” sheets we used in testing, a toasty “5” does the trick, followed by a minute and twenty seconds for optimum floppiness.

Anyone could use this machine and get a decent result out of it – it is almost absurdly simple. It does have its limitations, however. The shapes you put into the machine have to conform to simple vacuum forming rules, which are explained in the user guide that ships with the machine. Vertical sides and undercuts in the object will result in poor airflow, which produces an equally poor finish.

If you decide to mold something tall, awkward, and full of undercuts, your object will get trapped. The area you’re working with is only good for forming 200 x 200 mm, but ideally you’ll need 40 mm of clearance around each object to give a good mold. So, effectively, 160 x 160 mm is your workable area.

Despite that, if we were grading this machine on usability alone, it would score top marks. It’s simple, clear, and easy to understand, and you’d have to be quite silly to mess it up. Perfect for this reviewer.

The build quality is decent, too, although it’s not easy to tell if it will hold up to intense day-in, day-out use if this choccy business takes off. Speaking of which.

The chocolate business, yes. Here’s what we came up with. It started with something simple – some ordinary teaspoons from the office. Thinking that would be a particularly nice treat to have with some hot chocolate, we managed to form crisp molds that contour the shape well. A fair result, given the spoon’s arguably vacuum-form-rule-bending shape. Not perfect, but not disastrous. We repeated this with pliers and a spanner and, again, gained workable molds for our efforts. Time to up the ante.

We 3D printed a portrait of a model holding a flower pot on her head. An odd choice, sure, but something personal and reflective of the usage we foresee a small business or Etsy creator getting out of the Formbox. It is the sort of distinctive portrait that seemed like it would bring good results. And it did.

Following on from facial topography, actual topography followed with a 3D print of some mountains in North Bohemia. Again, the Formbox delivered, this time picking out some subtle layer details of our print, which is surprising given that it is a resin 3D print with barely perceptible layers.