Cold Bending Plastic Sheets

Alternatively in case you don t want to cold bend polycarbonate sheet apply heat.

Cold bending plastic sheets.

Hot bending polycarbonate sheet. However there are a couple of factors to. Cut the side pieces out using a dremel saw or razor knife when you are done tracing. Heat source small projects with bends that are close together will need upon heat source which can be easily aimed at small areas.

Degrade the sheet if the heating cycle is exceeded. This takes us to another important fabrication process. All this occurs on a molecular level. As could be inferred from its name cold curving is the process of bending the whole polycarbonate.

Strip heat bending utilizes infrared elements and may degrade the sheet if heating cycles are exceeded. 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. 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 sheetnominal sheet thickness recommended. Lay the bent acrylic on its side on a new piece of flat acrylic and trace the sides using a permanent marker or chinagraph pencil.

Trace the sides of your newly bent piece of acrylic in order to make the side pieces. Well this is the opposite of the cold bending polycarbonate sheet. Even without heating a polycarbonate sheet can be bent. Depending on the thickness of the material most plastics can be bent in a gradual radius without negatively affecting the integrity of the material.

Main techniques of bending polycarbonate sheet 1. Some materials can even be cold bent using a press brake the same machine used for bending metal. Tuffak gp polycarbonate sheets may be cold bent with the minimum radius based upon the sheet thickness. 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.

To bend sheet plastic and acrylic you will need. A typical forced circulation air oven is shown in figure 1. Cold line bending polycarbonate sheet is basically a prelude to fabrication process. As a guideline the material can be radiused to 100 times the thickness.

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. Chemically spectar is similar to the pete used to make disposable drink bottles and is commonly abbreviated as petg. It is limited to two dimensional forming but is viable for bending sheet thicknesses of up to about two inches.