Articles

Before you continue, I suggest first reading this article describing the different bonding methods. Capillary bonding is the most well known method for joining acrylic. And from the number of posts, easy to assume it is the only way. As in all methods, surface preparation is key to success. For this article's purposes, I will assume properly prepared surfaces are the case and the solvent we are using is un-thickened Weldon 3. Pins or no pins. Placing pins between the surfaces to be bonded...

Satisfactory joints between acrylic sheet and other plastics as well as non-plastics are more difficult than joining acrylic to acrylic and the resulting joints are usually lower strength. In most cases, there is a substantial difference in thermal expansion between acrylic sheet and non-plastic materials. When joints between dissimilar materials are exposed to rising or falling temperatures, the materials expand and contract by different amounts, placing large stresses on any bond between...

Acrylic pieces may be joined three ways: 1) mechanical means such as bolts or screws 2) thermal means such as welding 3) chemical methods such as cementing For our purposes, I will focus on the third method, cementing. There is a great amount of misinformation regarding this topic. The information I am presenting is from knowledgeable sources including manufacturers of acrylic and manufacturers of cements. I then use our extensive fabrication experience and apply this information to real...

The simplest method of forming acrylic sheet along a straight line is to use a strip heater. Strip heaters are typically used to for the rapid production of simple boxes, and frames. They are generally limited to straight line bends. The process is usually used for small parts where the length of the bend is relatively short. Longer bends over 24 inches tend to bow, what we call the banana effect. Inexpensive strip heaters are readily available. They are wired for 110V line current and...

Corner pentagon aquariums have two symmetric back walls and a bent viewing panel. The back walls are at 90 degrees to each other and the viewing panel completes the vertical structure. The final assembly consists of a top and a bottom. The challenge is the short leg dimension of the front viewing panel. A Tenecor® corner pentagon is dimensioned with identical lengths of both the back wall panels and the the distance between the two bends of the viewing panel. The image below represents a 48...

Routers are used in edge-finishing operations and for cutting flat or formed acrylic sheet parts to size. For our purposes, the two main types of router configurations I will discuss are 1) table and 2) portable. For edging small parts, the table router is convenient. When a part or assembly is or becomes too large, a portable router will be required. It's all about speed. Spindle speed and surface speed. For best results, routers should have a minimum no-load spindle speed of 10,000 rpm...

Acrylic sheet can be cut in three ways: 1) Sawing 2) Routing 3) Scribing and breaking Sawing and routing can be used for straight and curved cuts on any thickness of material. Scribing is limited to straight cuts in thin pieces of sheet .236 inches or less in thickness. It is practical for craftsmen who do not have power tools and for cutting small quantities of sheet material. The kind of cutting to be done will determine the type of sawing equipment you will need. Circular blade saws...

Hello everyone, There is a great deal of R2R interest in forming and fabricating with acrylic. There is also a great deal of misinformation. This is will be the first post, in a series of posts, discussing and explaining just about everything you ever wanted to know about working with acrylic. We have been fabricating for over 40 years using acrylic and almost every other plastic. What you will see here is based on our experiences along with technical specifications from the industry. Some...

These are an inexpensive way to create some functional and stylish dosing containers and you’ll be recycling/repurposing, too! The “GHL Edition” in the title is just a little humor because these happen to match my GHL Doser perfectly! A little added bonus for any other GHL owners out there. But if the transparent blue is not your thing, feel free to grab a can of Krylon plastic paint and spray the caps the color of your choice. This is almost identical to creating dosing containers using...