Using Acrylic Fabrication Tools To Make A Product

Get the best fit and shape on your plastic model by using the acrylic fabrication process. This process forms the acrylic sheets into products such as shelves, furniture, or any product imaginable. The process uses specialized tooling and requires a factory to have a variety of manufacturing equipment to make these products. Therefore, to reduce costs of purchasing machinery, the manufacturers tend to focus on building out similar size and type of acrylic products.

Why Choose Acrylic Over Glass?

Since we have had the technology to fabricate acrylics, there is a number of differences discovered between glass and acrylics. To start with, acrylics can achieve the same clear finish as glass using a diamond polishing process. You might want to choose an acrylic fabrication over the glass for the following reasons. Acrylics are lighter than glass so can be used in larger pieces. The plastic used to form acrylic is more durable and less likely to break and shatter as if glass would be. The cost of the material is cheaper. Thus, the savings can be passed along to the customers. Given these benefits, the acrylic material has replaced glass in many different areas. Hence, you can consider it for your fabrication needs.

Acrylic Sheets

Starting the Acrylic Fabrication Process

To begin fabrication, you need to come up with a model. You should use a computer aided drawing software package to design your product. These software packages will output files that the fabricators will need to configure their tooling to create the product you need.

In order to form the acrylic, there are various methods used to manipulate the materials.

• Molding - When the materials are heated and put into a mold to cool and harden. Several types of molding exist. The common processes are injection molding, blow molding, and rotational molding.

• Plastic Foaming – Using two chemicals polyurethane and polystyrene, when these are mixed together, the foam is created and then shaped into the product needed. Then the piece is allowed to harden.

• Plastic Welding – Taking two pieces of material and heating them to a high temperature in order to fuse them together.

• Plastic Lamination – When two or more sheets of material are fused by a chemical bonding agent in order to create a protective coating or to increase the product strength.

Once a piece is formed into its shape, you may need to employ some additional processes for finishing the product.

Custom Acrylic Box

• Machine Routing And Drilling – A number of different machines are used for cutting holes and adding curves and shapes into the material. These machines use high-speed spinning bits to slowly shave off layers of the acrylic materials until there are holes, shapes, or curves in the material.

• Cut To Size Or Shape – When the product is not the exact size as your mold or if you have multiple units together in the same piece, you may need to cut the pieces using a sawing tool.

• Edge Finishing & Polishing – When the acrylic is cut, the edges are usually scratched and not clear. In order to give the edges, the same clear finish as the surfaces, there are specialized polishing machines to clear the scratches to a clear finish. These machines use high-speed polishing brushes and some polishing gels to eliminate any abrasions or scratches and leave a clear finish.

• Laser Cutting – Similar to cutting a piece using a saw, newer techniques utilize a laser, which heats the surface to a high temperature to cut the material. The lasers have the ability to make tight corners. These lasers are vibration free and can make accurate cuts.  These lasers are controlled using the software. It will read from your CAD files you provide to the fabricator.