in this video we are going to take a look at how to cut acrylic sheet there
are many different types, many different colors many different thicknesses and
also many different finishes of acrylic for example this one is in non
reflective finish that is an opal colour I actually bought this for a project and I can't
remember what I bought it by now but that's one of the benefits of getting old, you can also
get clear like that, that is 10 millimeters thick I've then got some blue non reflective
finish and then we've got some colorful green gloss finish and then this piece
is a piece of Lucite this would normally be used for sanitary work such
as their bath or a shower tray so we're going to look at a few different
ways of cutting this at home. obviously one of the best ways of
cutting this is using a laser cutter but not everybody has access to a laser
cutter the first technique we're going to look
at is scribe breaking and that can be done on acrylic up to about 4
millimeters thick these two pieces are about three millimeters that one's 3.2
that's three millimetres, that''s five millimeters so you could probably cut
the 5 millimeter piece by scribe breaking if you scribed it on both sides
we'll start off by scribe breaking this piece of 3.2 millimeter lucite there are
quite a lot of trade names of acrylic sheet such as perspex plexiglass lucite
etc so we've got one straight edge on this piece already so I'm going to use
the square I'm going to put it on the edge and then I'm just going to scribe a
line in down here on the masking you can use a marker for doing this and if use a
marker it is much easier to see but for this demonstration I'm just going to use the
scriber
so I've now got a line there where I need to cut it I'm going to align that
with the edge on the bench I'm then going to take a straight edge I'm going
to put that on the line and then I'm going to clamp that down in position now
I've done that I'm going to take a knife and I'm going to score along there a couple
of times. because I have such a small piece I'm actually going to release the
clamps, I'm going to turn that around, clamp the short piece and then I'm going to
scribe break the larger piece trying to address something like almost impossible
because you cannot grip it I'm going to ensure that the scribed line is perfectly
in line with the bench and then I'm going to clamp that down. now that I've done
that you simply take hold of the piece of acrylic and press down on it firmly I'll
now just put that down whilst I cut the masking on the back and I'll just give you a close-up
then you can see the quality of the cut
like I said the quality is not that Good But it is a very quick and a very easy way
of cutting the acrylic obviously that would need a good sanding down now to
get a good finish on that edge. Like I say you can do that up to four millimeters
no problem at all you may even be able to do five millimeters or even six
millimeters if you were to scribe both sides. I'm now going to take the knife I'm going
to scribe that a few times on the top
I'm also going to scribe it underneath
I'm going to take hold of it and give it a firm push downwards and as you can see
that block very cleanly, so I have got a straight cut but obviously it's going to
take a bit of work to sand that down to give us a nice clean finish you can
easily cut acrylic using a jigsaw but you do need to use a metal cutting blade
so you need one with small fine teeth like that or even like that that will
cut acrylic absolutely no problem at all
what you don't want to do is use a blade like that because that will give you a
really bad finish and will chip the acrylic really badly obviously you're
going to need a pair of safety glasses on when you do this I've now got a metal
cutting blade in this jigsaw and I'm going to cut this going very slowly
you do need to have a jigsaw that's got variable speed so that you can go slow
you don't want to go at full speed when you're cutting acrylic also you don't
want to put orbital action on because that will also chip the acrylic if
you go too fast when you're cutting acrylic it will weld itself back
together once you have cut it
if for any reason you need to stop when you're cutting the acrylic you need to
pull the Machine backwards and then start the machine going before you
try cutting the acrylic again or there is a chance that you will crack it
so that's the kind of cut that you can get if you've got the correct speed
I'll show you what happens if you try going too fast
and of course if you've got to fast it will weld itself back together like that!
the advantage of using jigsaw is that it is absolutely superb for doing radiuses
and curved lines
like so. A circular saw can be used like this it doesn't matter if it's mains powered
or battery the important thing is adjusting it so that you get the
correct depth of cut, if you were to cut the acrylic with the blade as it is
there that depth you're going to waste a lot of energy by the friction which is
caused when you are cutting the material so what you would do is just ensure that
the teeth of the blade go through to the other side of the acrylic that you are
cutting again you're going to need a pair of safety glasses when you do this and
some hearing protection. The important thing with this is to start
the machine before you touch the acrylic and go at a slow steady speed
and take your time when you're exiting the cut because that is where it could
possibly chip you'll notice I'm using the straight edge I've set that up so that
the circular saw will use that as a guide to guide it perfectly across the sheet
so as you can see that cut that very easily there is a big difference when
you're cutting acrylic depending on the blade that you use if you use a general
wood blade you don't get that good of a finish if you can get one that's got a
lot more teeth you do tend to get a better quality cut which I'll
demonstrate on the table saw but you can always use a hand held circular saw like
for cutting acrylic. This is the evolution Rage 5 and I have actually installed
a special blade on that which has got 120 teeth so that blade has got a lot
more teeth than the normal blade that it shipped with the machine, I have to say
this is very good at cutting acrylic I've cut quite a bit on it you can cut
single pieces or you can stack them up on top of one another and you can do
what's called a pack cut and push them all through the blade at once it
does give you a very good cut on acrylic when you're setting this machine
up you do need to adjust the depth of the blade obviously that's far too high
though so we need to lower that down and with this machine you just need to
ensure that you can get under the guard at the back there so that's about as
low as we can go the beauty of this machine is that when
you start with the vacuum cleaner it does take away at the majority of the
swarf the beauty of a machine like this is that you can get extremely straight cuts
and also you can get really good finish on the acrylic if you use a quality
blade like that of course you can cut it using the normal blade that is supplied
with the machine but it doesn't give you the quality of cut that a
specialist blade will you need to set the machine going and ensure the
blades going at full speed before you slowly push the material through the
blade
this is a piece of acrylic which has been cut and then line bent if you
take a look at that side you can see that that has given us a really good
cut and that's not been sanded or polished or anything that is just a cut
from that blade that is in the machine If we take a look at the other edge that
was actually cut using a normal circular saw blade so you can see that
the quality of the cut is nowhere near as good so that is the difference
that a specific blade for cutting acrylic can make when you are cutting acrylic
sheet you can see that we've got an absolutely fantastic cut along that
edge and no further work was required on that
few months ago I made a gift for a friend it was fifty and the base was
actually made from several pieces of acrylic which were glued together
actually cut that on this which is the rage 3 dB
using the supplied blade with the machine and that give us a very good
quality cut which didn't take too much polishing to get out the saw marks
obviously if you've got a CNC machine or you've got a laser machine you can cut acrylic
absolutely no problem at all. But this video has shown you some of the
techniques you can use at home to cut acrylic I hope you found this video
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