Cutting perspex
- Thread starter Keitai
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In my experience cutting 10mm perspex it depends on the length of your cut & how good a finish you require. Cutting with any type of power saw ends up with the edges beginning to melt & become very rough & perhaps even grabbing the blade & damaging the sheet or the machine. A fine tooth hand saw used slowly is the best diy way I found. If you have a lot to do & really need to use a machine then try & get the cutting edge on top of some sort of heat sink that will help cool the cut as you do it.
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Sandwich the perspex between 2 thin sheets of plywood and cut it with a fine toothed blade on a jigsaw.
Never tried a circular saw, so can't comment on that.
Never tried a circular saw, so can't comment on that.
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I recently had to cut some 3mm perspex and I experimented before making the final cut. The table saw fitted with 80t new blade) was the poorest, it melted the perspex. The band saw was good but it does need to be cut on top of plywood to stop chipping. The best was creating a deep score with a sharp blade and snapping it like plasterboard.
Don’t run the saw directly on the Perspex - you will scratch it.
a negative rake blade or triple chip blade should work.
that blade in your saw looks like a positive rake ripping / combi blade and doesn’t look too sharp.
a negative rake blade or triple chip blade should work.
that blade in your saw looks like a positive rake ripping / combi blade and doesn’t look too sharp.
This will not end well. Also, will that timber post be replaced?
Andy
Andy
Hopefully!
D
Deleted member 174758
I agree - for the best cut a spiral router cutter, run at a relatively low spindle speed (12,000 to 14,000rpm) but the highest possible feed speed works best of all because you generate a stream of curls or chips off the cutter, rather than dust or scrapings (which is what you get with higher spindle speeds). The chips tend to be thrown clear of the cutter, taking the heat generated by cuttting with them, if you generate a lot of dust it tends to weld bak onto the acrylic.
Acrylic can also be rough sawn with a jigsaw and a wavy set metal blade before using the router, although the blade they make specifically cutting acrylic, the T101A is far superior.
The last time that I tried snap and score with 3mm, it, well, it didn't work out well. Perhaps I didn't score deeply enough.
I end up using a Japanese saw.
Thanks for the bandsaw feed back. I sometimes use perspex to "shutter" epoxy resin fillers.
Perhaps others can clarify...
If you are using the perspex in lieu of glass, I was under the impression that UV light will degrade the perspex, making it more brittle.
Toughened glass will shatter in to tiny bits if someone falls in to it. Perspex creates large shards which could (potentially) puncture an organ.
I have no idea if 10mm perspex suffers the same fate.
The perspex in the pics is "glass look perspex" & unaffected by UV light. Or that is what it looks like to me.
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