Cold Bending Acrylic Sheet

To bend sheet plastic and acrylic you will need.

Cold bending acrylic sheet.

Be sure that the marked line is above the heating element. Minimum cold forming radius sheet thickness x 100. Set the sheet of acrylic across the rests on the strip heater and turn it on. The two best tools for this are a small butane torch the type used in the kitchen work well or you can also use an embossing heat tool used by card makers and scrapbookers to melt and apply embossing powders.

Forming but is viable for bending sheet thicknesses of up to about two inches. The recommended radius of curvature should be a value greater than 180 times the thickness of the sheet for plexiglas g sheet and 300 times the thickness for plexiglas mc sheet see table below recommended minimum radii of curvature for cold formed plexiglas. Spectar supposedly looks and handles much like acrylic but with the surprising property that it can be cold formed without breaking or whitening and exhibits a memory effect holding a cold bend until reheated. In the image above the values are all in inches but the principle often holds even if the units are in mm.

Wear gloves as you do this to avoid burning your hands. Plexiglas acrylic sheet heated from one side may vary from one. 22 cold forming 22 strip heat bending 23 drape forming 23 three dimensional forming. Cold forming plexiglas sheet can be cold formed bent at room temperature in a smooth arc and held to a radius by forcing the material into a curved channel support.

Plexiglas sheet cold forming. This radius is applied in all cold bending procedures. Chemically spectar is similar to the pete used to make disposable drink bottles and is commonly abbreviated as petg. Heat source small projects with bends that are close together will need upon heat source which can be easily aimed at small areas.