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about the hacksaw, i dont know, but, a jigsaw isnt the best way to go, a finer blade will melt the plexi, and a slower speed will shake it. i would know this because i cut plexiglass frequently. as far as gluing though, i agree, but dont use a glue gun or other stuff like that, but i use gorilla glue, and that seems to be mighty stable
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Originally Posted by tybrenis
Another method of cutting is Laser Cutting. It is extremely accurate and gives a good finish. It also takes much less time.
My workplace has a cutter which can fit up to 1100 x 1100 (mm) sheets. This is large enough to cut most things that I need to. You can get larger ones although obviously the price increases with size. The cheapest decent one that I've seen is around £14000 (I believe that is about $27000).
You can plug your computer into them and they'll cut whatever you design with a beam of light. I wouldn't expect many people to want to spend that much money themselves, but it may be possible to persuade your work/school to make the investment for you ;)
I am currently building a CNC machine - it will be a CNC router. Eventually, I will use to it to cut out a new CNC machine for myself: this one will use a laser, probably CO2.
So your making a CNC machine so it can make you a CNC machine? ...my god... thats brilliant!
Hehe... yup. As soon as my machine is done, it will be used to cut and drill higher precision parts that will be used to replace the hand made ones in the machine. Eventually, I plan on building a CO2 laser and then making a second machine that uses a laser to cut patterns in metal.Quote:
Originally Posted by SnowFire
duno if anyone already posted this but heres somin for gluing plexi together
http://guides.pcapex.com/modding/diy_acrylic_cement.php
Man, a laser cutter sounds great. All I need to do now is sell my house. I might need to run that one by the wife.
Hehe. Just build you own. My router is costing less than $400 to build, everything included. Add a laser to that and its still probably less than $1200.
Ok, so from reading the information in this thread, I can pretty much cut acryllic to my hearts content just like the pros...
But what about painting? Specifically I had a mod idea that went something like this:
Sparing lots of details, I want a plexiglass side window that is transparent, but not so much that you can actually see the PC parts inside. Thats easy enough and could be acheived by using the methods to make a 'frosted' look.
Heres the kicker, I want it to look something like an early night sky, that is, I want a light blue that fades to almost black towards the top. (the idea being to kit-bash a model of a moon and mod it into the upper part of the plexiglass, and wanting perhaps to set a smattering of white LEDs for stars).
How to do this? I was thinking of sandpapering the plexi, to give it the frosted look, then attempting to spraypaint this side (it should stick since its roughed up?). I've heard there are some 'transparent' paints, dont know as im not really an artist.
That would be a bit tricky to do, but achievable. Yes, you would have to "rough it up" a bit before you sprayed it. They do indeed make transparent paints, but I have only seen them for airbrushes, never in spray paint form (that doesn't mean they don't exist, I just haven't seen them!).
Some transparent paints:
http://www.pearlpaint.com/shop~paren...oryID~5484.htm
http://www.pearlpaint.com/shop~ocID~...oryID~5477.htm