Best Way To Bend Acrylic Sheets

If you don t have a toaster oven you can carefully use a heat gun to heat the acrylic.

Best way to bend acrylic sheets.

If the material is at 160 degrees celsius it can be bent. How to prepare acrylic sheet for work how to cut acrylic. It is the process of heating the sheet to a specific temperature and then letting it cool down slowly at a predetermined rate. Professionals who bend acrylate regularly or bend acrylic sheet do so with the aid of a filament.

How to cut acrylic sheet by hand with only hand tools. Place the part of the acrylic to be bent just above the open door wait for it to soften enough and then bend it to the angle desired. Strip heat bending utilizes infrared elements and may degrade the sheet if heating cycles are exceeded. To create bends for small scale projects in plexiglass perspex or acrylic 1 8 inch and thinner you can use a small torch butane kitchen torches work well a paint stripping heat gun or an embossing heat tool which is a wand that works very similarly to a paint stripping gun but using a smaller more directed heat flow with a smaller fan.

Heating is a slow process in order to make sure that you get a straight bend in the acrylic. Prepare your heat gun for bending the acrylic. Never use water to cool the acrylic as this will make the acrylic brittle. How to cut acrylic sheet by hand.

Bending acrylic is best done with a strip heater or line bender but you can use an ordinary oven set at 120 160c use a jig or former to get the angle correct. It becomes soft and can then be properly although care must be taken. Place the bend line into the wooden form as it approaches your desired angle. One way of reducing stress induced cracking on the bend line is by the process of annealing.

A typical forced circulation air oven is shown in figure 1. Degrade the sheet if the heating cycle is exceeded. It is limited to two dimensional forming but is viable for bending sheet thicknesses of up to about two inches. Scoring is the best way to cut the acrylic in straight lines and then snap it like you do with glass.

Over bend the sheet slightly to prevent memory and then let the sheet relax back into the form. Make your pressure on the acrylic as even as possible while you push. Continue to direct the heat jet back and forth along the bend line until the acrylic sheet fits into the form at the correct angle.