Tips for working with plexi/acrylic

[tybrenis]

For gluing acrylic you will want to use a solvent glue, such as a weld-on from a brand like IPS. I personally just use methylene chloride, this is my favorite solvent for gluing most plastics. It works great on styrene, acrylic, polycarbonate, PVC, and more. I do not recomend trying to glue acrylic with an epoxy or silicon, this is a bad idea.

[bennyrux]

For what it's worth, I've read (never tried) that others have had success drilling holes in plexi in reverse. I don't think drill presses can be made to turn in reverse, but corless drills and other electric hand drills can be switched to turn in reverse. It prevents the drill from taking out a chunk when you drill thru the back.

-BennyRux

[Cannibal23]

when i drill mine i just use a drill press with sharp cobalt bits. wich is probably a little over kill but it works well for me. typicaly i cut the design out of the side panel first and get it prepaired and then duct tape the paper coverd plex to the underside of the panel. then i drill the holes in the metal and the plex at the same time so i know they will match up for sure. i dont use the rubber window trim, i just bolt the window onto the inside of the panel wich works out pretty good. if you pick good places for your bolts then you dont need to worry about the edges of the metal sticking out a little and cutting you. this also makes it more convieniant for cleaning if the window gets dirty you just unbolt it and wash it

[ajmilton]

I've been lurking for a week or two, decided to toss in a little information i found on working with plexiglas - the "official" plexiglas website has a couple of pretty decent manuals on fabrication and forming:

fabrication:
http://www.plexiglas.com/literature/pdf/134.pdf

forming:
http://www.plexiglas.com/literature/pdf/135.pdf

i haven't worked with any of it yet but there's lots of charts and pictures and whatnot.

[fragged]

I havnt read all the replys but I thought I might mention the methods my old school used to use to bend acrylic. Both methods we were told to allow the acrylic to heat till it was flimsyish (experiment), and then bend it slowly, once we have our angle, we had to ether manually hold it there or use a vice, or scrap wood to hold it till it cooled down (Took about 5 minutes), also, Acrylic is a soft plastic, that is you can reheat it till your content.

Sharp Bends
They used a strip heater which is basically a heater that heats about 30cmx2cm, and told us to use metal to block off the heat we didnt need (of course, we used gloves) this was capable of just about any angle I tried,

Round Bends
The second method seemed to be custom made for the tech room, they had another wall mountable thin heater (30cmx2cm) and two pieces of wood about 15cm above it on rails so they could move in and out as below
______...______ <-Wood
..-----...------ <-Rails
...\________/ <--Heater

(Excuse the crappy ascii art, the forums clear out all unneeded spaces (.'s are imaginary spaces )
so basically you heat up whatevers hanging between the wood pieces, which move in and out to allow you to control your design

Hope this helps somebody,

-Fragged

[Acey]

I used jigsaw on acrylic/plexi coupled with Black & Decker's Piranha blades. Forgot the full code but there's 2 blades with 1xx-1 (finer) and 1xx-2 that gives clean cuts while the other 3 remaining blades are for wood work.

[drcrash]

You can vacuum form acrylics into all kinds of shapes, on a homemade machine that's not expensive or difficult to make.

Here's a shape I did recently, using a piece of acrylic fluorescent diffuser panel from the hardware store, because I like the funky texture:

In the pictures, the acrylic is around the plaster life cast I molded it around.

(The yellow stuff around the nostrils is modeling clay I packed there to keep the acrylic from pulling in too much to get it off. The green cast in the second picture comes from taking it under fluorescent light and not color-correcting it.)

[Zephik]

That looks like it would be perfect for a mars mod! Put it on top of your case and make your case look like mars. Since you know how the rumors and pictures go about the face on mars. ^^

-SF

[intergalacticman]

as far as cutting goes, a jigsaw's vibration will crack the plexi and melt it from the friction. a hacksaw will only work if the peice is small, or it will become stuck, the way i did it successfully was by scoring it multiple times and breaking it. although it was time consimong and messy, it worked

[tybrenis]

That is not true intergalactic man. Acrylic is cut well with a hacksaw using a metal blade. I don't know what happened to you, but generally hacksaw are decent for cutting intricate designs.

Also, you can only use the score and snap method for acrylic 1/8" and thinner.

Also, using the proper blade with the acrylic correctly set up for cutting, a jigsaw will not break it as long as you take the necessary precautions. Also, acrylic will not melt if the jig saw is at the right speed. Any faster with the wrong blade would hook the acrylic, shake it, and snap it (probably what you did).