How to bend plexiglass

02-01-2018

Useful

Modern technologies offer us new building materials that successfully replace those “natural” products that did not always satisfy us with their parameters — cost or physical indicators (weight, structure), additional difficulties in processing, etc. Such materials include ordinary glass, which Today successfully replaced with organic glass.

Properties and scope of organic glass

This solid synthetic material retained the transparency of ordinary silicate glass, but acquired many new advantages, which makes it possible to use it in the automotive industry, for the manufacture of glass doors, aquariums, greenhouse structures, roofs, many decorative parts such as designer panels, advertising stands, for molding computer enclosures. Plexiglass evenly distributes the light, so it is used for the manufacture of various bright light-dynamic installations with flashing lights and running lights that look particularly attractive in the dark.

The material does not have such increased brittleness as ordinary glass (and therefore not so dangerous), it is not so heavy in weight, it is easy to deform and cut. As a thermoplastic under the influence of high temperatures become plastic. In this "secret" lies the clue how to bend it.

Adhering to some rules, you can easily transform the shape of this material. To do this, you need special tools: a workbench, a metal pipe, nichrome wire, a blowtorch and a power source with its adjustment.

The advantages of plexiglass include:

impact resistance (5 times higher than silicate glass);
electrical insulating properties;
resistance to moisture and other external environmental factors, frost resistance;
high light transmission ability (up to 92%);
environmental friendliness (absence of poisonous gases during combustion and heating);
non-susceptible to UV rays (73% throughput);
resistance to chemical agents;
compliance when creating a variety of forms.

The disadvantages include its main feature - ease of deformation with sharp objects, which requires an accurate attitude to the products.

Sheets of organic glass are sold with a film applied on them, which partially protects its blanks from damage. However, the film cannot protect the sheet from scratches or even cracks when cutting it with a metal hacksaw or a jigsaw. In addition, these tools create a large number of sawdust. There are more functional ways of cutting and processing sheets of this material.

How to bend under the influence of heat

Plexiglas requires accuracy and timeliness of exposure to it at the time of softening under the influence of heat. This polymer of synthetic origin allows you to perform with it a lot of mechanical operations to create both flat and bulk objects.

Flexing is not the most difficult task, but it requires some experience and some rules that we will pay special attention to.

Wire bending

Before processing, the sheet of material must be subjected to mandatory drying, otherwise moisture bubbles will form at the place of its bending, which not only spoil its appearance, violating transparency, but also change its structure. Drying is carried out at a temperature of 80? C at the rate of time - 1.5 hours per 1 mm of the thickness of the workpiece.
We will fix the dried leaf on the workbench. We fix the nichrome wire at a distance of up to 0.5 cm from the workpiece, exactly along the line along which the workpiece should be bent. It is not necessary to draw a line with a marker on the sheet, since it will be very difficult to remove traces after heating the workpiece. Set the stop to which the sheet should be deformed.
Nichrome wire for its heating is connected to an adjustable power source with the required temperature of the heat. Usually, the material begins to deform at a heat of 150-190? С.
After a sufficient time, the sheet under the weight of its own weight will begin to sag up to the stop you have set.

Metal pipe bending

To bend the workpiece under a certain degree, either a metal pipe of the desired diameter is used, or a workpiece made of Plexiglas itself, or machined from wood.

Set the sheet on top of the pipe, and then heat the sheet with a blowtorch in the line of contact with the pipe until the material begins to yield and takes the form of a pipe.
Cooling of the product is carried out smoothly, evenly and continuously to a temperature of 60-70? С.
Secure the sheet in a vice on a flat table. Lightly scratch the fold line.
Heat the sheet according to the drawn line with the help of a building hair dryer (or a soldering station hair dryer) at a temperature of 150-180? С and begin to bend the sheet without taking the hair dryer away from the place of heating. To warm the sheet should be gradually, not bringing to its melting. If the sheet is thicker than 5-6 mm, it is better to warm up on both sides of the sheet, either simultaneously or alternately. The latter is heated by the side of the sheet, which will be on the convex side of the bend. Cold areas of the sheet should be covered with something, leaving only a narrow strip along the warm-up line. The width of the heated strip should be three times the thickness of the sheet.
The sheet should be bent away from the heat source, that is, the heat jet should be directed to the convex part of the bend.

Bending with a heat gun

Bending can also be done after heating it in boiling water, in an oven, with a gas burner, or even with the fire of candles placed in a row. The heated thin sheet is easily bent by the hands (with gloves!), It is also possible to squeeze out any indentations in it.

Using heat treatment, organic glass can be cut, for example, using a heated coil. It is especially convenient to use a spiral for cutting small products.

Spiral cutting

For cutting plexiglass fit spiral from the heater, from a soldering iron, from the old variable resistor. The approximate parameters of the spiral - length 7 cm, diameter 0.3 mm, power 12 volts, energy consumption 1.5 amperes. At the same time, the spiral becomes red hot, which is not at all necessary, since the material will melt and emit smoke with a pungent odor. The spiral is soldered to the metal pins, and the pins - to the cable connected to the power supply with adjustable voltage.

Gluing

Plexiglas can not only bend and cut, but also glue. For this, it is not necessary to apply cyanoacrylate glue with all its advantages “to seize tightly”, since in places of bonding the material loses its transparency (whitens), and the glue spreads easily and quickly in different directions. It must be said that the bonding of parts is not a simple matter, as compared with the sticky ordinary silicate glass with the help of silicone glue or a hot-melt glue gun.

And yet it should be glued with dichloroethane - a poisonous transparent liquid agent that dissolves almost any plastic. Dichloroethane is applied to the cleaned surface of the joints and immediately put together for setting. Then a mixture of chips and dichloroethane is prepared with the consistency of kissel, this mixture fills the seam at the junction. Before this procedure is to practice, and the work carried out with the obligatory protection from the toxic fumes of dichloroethane, followed by treatment of hands in warm water with soap.

Plexiglass is foldable and cool. However, the bending radius is 230 times greater than the thickness of the sheet being bent.

To learn how to bend the material without damaging it, it is worth remembering that in any work a good preliminary training will never hurt.