Cutting Acrylic on a Wood Router

[Geof]

No you're wrong. If you use Kerosine it comes out chrystal clear like the rest of the material. If you haven't tried it you don't know.

Read what I wrote: "once you have washed all traces off". It is quite difficult to get every trace of kerosine, or any mineral oil, out of the minuscule roughness in the machined surface and these traces make the surface seem clear. Soap. of course, washes out easily.

I have machined acrylic, lots of it, experimenting with different liquids as a lubricant/coolant. Here is an example:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46464

[deanbrock]

Yup, you can clearly see the brushes sparking while the porter cable running, but it doesn't seem like much of a danger, if you're not using kerosene cutting fluid.

I've caught my JGRO on fire already, but it wasn't commutator sparks and kerosense, it was running a dull bit which made an ember that was fanned to flame by the dust collection. Thankfully, I was around to keep it from getting out of hand.

I think that's a more significant fire danger with homemade CNC routers. A dull bit, producing an ember, that gets sucked up into the vacum bag, with lots of wood dust and fresh air circuilating in it... That could be tricky to extinguish.

By the way, I ran some more plex, with a 1/8" 2 flute spiral bit at 20 IPM, and it made a huge difference. It still stunk, but it didn't fuse to the bed this time. :^)

Thanks, yall.

[Mike Stevenson]

deanbrock,

Sounds like words of experience.

[Charlie Gimble]

Soap is fine but the finish will be frosted not clear. Working with a sparking router that can cause a fire is not safe under ANY circumstances.

I used to work at a sign-shop and they treated the frosted finish using either a small propane torch or a welder's torch heating the 1/4"-1" thk edges of the routed plastics.

A gentle flame, held 4-6" away from the frosted edges would produce edges like glass. You can easily "finish the edges" of a piece 3'x4' in less than a minute

[Geof]

I used to work at a sign-shop and they treated the frosted finish using either a small propane torch or a welder's torch heating the 1/4"-1" thk edges of the routed plastics.

A gentle flame, held 4-6" away from the frosted edges would produce edges like glass. You can easily "finish the edges" of a piece 3'x4' in less than a minute

I am guessing you worked with cast acrylic. I tried this on extruded acrylic one time and just got a bubbly mess; it seems to have a much lower softening temperature than cast