Model Boat Mayhem

Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: essex2visuvesi on November 30, 2014, 08:07:15 pm

Title: Anyone here have an acrylic sheet bender?
Post by: essex2visuvesi on November 30, 2014, 08:07:15 pm

My dad needs a little job he would like doing

Title: Re: Anyone here have an acrylic sheet bender?
Post by: Tug-Kenny RIP on November 30, 2014, 08:33:15 pm

Sounds interesting.  May I ask what these look like ?

I visualize bending flat plastic sheets for which I tend to use wood in a vice and a hot air gun.                 %)

Cheers

Ken

Title: Re: Anyone here have an acrylic sheet bender?
Post by: essex2visuvesi on November 30, 2014, 09:11:52 pm

http://www.crclarke.co.uk/products/LB/500.html


something like that

Title: Re: Anyone here have an acrylic sheet bender?
Post by: Klunk on November 30, 2014, 09:18:57 pm

we used to use an oil filled radiator to heat the sheet up

Title: Re: Anyone here have an acrylic sheet bender?
Post by: tigertiger on December 01, 2014, 09:05:43 am

I used to do something similar in a factory.

First of all you need to make a former. You can do this with wood and body filler if you need something exact and smooth. Or for something the rough shape you can use a piece of wood. A cloth over the top will help prevent scratching.
Warm the acrylic on a baking sheet in a hot oven, you will need to experiment with temperature. You can get it to go very floppy indeed. Using gloves, it gets hot, place the heated acrylic sheet over the former, and rub the sheet so that it take on the shape of the former. Keep pressing down until it begins to cool and go rigid again. This is only takes a few minutes for thin materials acrylic.


This works well for simple curves. It even works for compound curves, if the second curve is very slight.


This also works well with Lexan.