[Jewelry making - Article 00798] - [Orchid] Hot forming acrylic plastic

[John Burgess]

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    G'day.   Don't use a torch; acrylic has a very low heat conduction
    coefficient, so the face where the flame hits cooks up to bubble
    heat quickly and the other side is quite cold. 

    Simply heat a household oven to about 70 - 80C, place the sheet (or
    whatever) acrylic plastic, in it and it will soon become very
    rubbery and can be handled with gloves and manipulated to any shape
    you want.  I have even made tube, angle,  or half spheres with hot
    acrylic. For  spheres I clamped the 1/4 inch thick hot sheet on a
    strong airtight box with a suitably sized hole in the top. I quickly
    extracted air from within the box using a vacuum pump until the
    atmospheric pressure pressed the flat sheet into a half sphere.  I
    cooled the plastic down with the vacuum in place using a gentle
    blast of cold compressed air until it went solid.   I cut off the
    extra plastic and two of the half spheres were glued together with
    acrylic cement.  I used this technique to make atomic crystal models
    for lecture demonstration to 300 students.  The 'crystal' models
    were nearly 24 inches square, transparent, and light enough to hold
    up high with one hand. 

-- 
Cheers for now,
John Burgess;   johnb AT ts.co.nz of Mapua, Nelson NZ


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