cutting plastic

[Ron]

Not if you use a vertical wet belt sander :)

[Rudy]

If you have an electric soldering gun..the "gun" style with the interchangeable "tips"..

There is a tip made for this purpose..its flat in the same aspect as the length of the gun. Tip Looks like a very small, flattened "spoon".like l when seen from the end. In the gun, this heats up and you use the edge to slice/melt its way thru the plastic. Search Weller soldering gun and you should see it on their site.

[notbob]

We used to cut a lot of plexiglass and machine it, also. Kerosene makes a great lubricant for course tooth band or jig saws. Slow it down the cutting speed and keep it wet.

nb

[Ron]

No, just use making tape as I just described.

[Ron]

BTW, the only time I ever used any kind of liquid on plexi, was when I was drilling large holes through plexi. The liquid used was a tiny bit of antifreeze mixed with water surronded by a dam and using a professional tripod drill made for cutting holes in glass. Like this one.

[notbob]

That may work for plexi < 1/4", but is useless when sawing plexi > 1".

You can use a lot of different liquids, including water and alcohol, as long as it doesn't melt the plexi. We used kerosene or stodard's solvent cuz it was handy and didn't react with the plastic. NO ACETONE!!

TIP: the proper way to drill plexi is with a twist drill whose cutting edges has been "broken" or dulled by grinding, typically just a "touch" to the grinder at about 45 deg to the cutting edges. This is the same for brass and bronze. We kept whole separate sets of "broken" drill bits for just this purpose. It prevents grabbing and shattering of the material. With broken twist drills, we routinely drilled holes as large as 1" dia in 1-1/2" thick plexi. Natch, this was with radial drill presses w/ vari-drives that could get down to <

10 rpm and after drilling a pilot hole.

nb

[Tony]

I used to work with a fair amount of plexi glass and I purposely melted the holes through it by putting the drill in reverse on high speed. It made a little mess, but nothing a few seconds with a file didn't fix. Then when Lexan came out, well it was hard to screw it up. Too bad it scratches so easy.

[Ron]

The "proper way" according to who? I've drilled hundreds of holes in plexi using bits made for glass w/o any problems.. Like these

I've drilled holes in plexi using masonry bits which also works well.

Hell, I've drilled plexi with brand new twist bits w/o having a problem, but of course I have a lot of experience.

I do agree that you can use a dulled twist bit, but I wouldn't call it the "proper way".

And what about when you have to drill larger holes? I know no easier way than what I described above.