Acrylic sheets are relatively inexpensive pretty and can be heat shaped very effectively.
Bending acrylic sheet with heat gun temperature.
Sheet compared with about 10 to 12 minutes for air oven heating.
If it doesn t then you re just going to have to be quite diligent.
Then aim a heat gun at the point on the acrylic you want to bend.
To guard against cracking place the acrylic on a flat sheet of glass in a shop oven not the one in your kitchen at about 180ºf 82ºc for about 1 hour per mm thickness then let them air cool.
Only that the operator is now forced to move the heat gun constantly along the bend line and flip over the polycarbonate sheet to ensure both sides get heated.
If your heat gun has temperature control set it to between 130 150 c or a low medium setting.
Ambient oven temperature also affects the heating cycle.
As the acrylic heats up move the heat gun from side to side and steadily push on it with a piece of scrap wood to help it bend.
Using solvent based glues on laser cut extruded acrylic can cause cracking due to the internal stresses from temperature differences in the acrylic.
To achieve this core temperature the former must calculate the temperature differential on both sheet surfaces.
Acrylic sheet heated from one side may vary from one to three minutes depending on the type of heater and the distance from the heating surface to the plexiglas acrylic.
There are blades and tools made specifically for cutting heating and bending acrylic but marija shows.
Temperature uniformity varies with heater model.
To create bends for small scale projects in plexiglass perspex or acrylic 1 8 inch and thinner you can use a small torch butane kitchen torches work well a paint stripping heat gun or an embossing heat tool which is a wand that works very similarly to a paint stripping gun but using a smaller more directed heat flow with a smaller fan.
Fortunately today s technology has produced affordable hand held non contact infrared pyrometers that can be used to determine the sheet surface temperature.
Before you bend acrylic set it between 2 pieces of scrap wood and clamp them together with a vice.
