Bending Acrylic Sheet With Heat Gun Temperature

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.

Bending acrylic sheet with heat gun temperature.

Acrylic sheets are relatively inexpensive pretty and can be heat shaped very effectively. 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. Temperature uniformity varies with heater model. If your heat gun has temperature control set it to between 130 150 c or a low medium setting.

To achieve this core temperature the former must calculate the temperature differential on both sheet surfaces. Fortunately today s technology has produced affordable hand held non contact infrared pyrometers that can be used to determine the sheet surface temperature. There are blades and tools made specifically for cutting heating and bending acrylic but marija shows. Principally using a heat gun to bend a polycarbonate sheet is the same as hot line bending.

Using solvent based glues on laser cut extruded acrylic can cause cracking due to the internal stresses from temperature differences in the acrylic. Then aim a heat gun at the point on the acrylic you want to bend. 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. Before you bend acrylic set it between 2 pieces of scrap wood and clamp them together with a vice.

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. Sheet compared with about 10 to 12 minutes for air oven heating. Ambient oven temperature also affects the heating cycle. Bending polycarbonate sheet with a heat gun.