I've a piece of corian I want to use for a bathroom window cill - it came from a collection of off-cuts I got some time ago.
Unfortunately the 650mm length (the width is ~150mm) has a bow of about 5mm, and I need to glue on a fillet on the underside front, which of course has the bow going the opposite way. Clamping hasn't worked.
I'm told that the solution is to heat the corian to 150C for about 5 minutes to soften and then gently clamp flat while cooling.
The problem is that the piece is too big to go in the kitchen oven. I'm looking for some bright ideas on how to do a controlled heat to 150C - would for instance a suitable diameter drainpipe cope with this?
Plastic drainpipe will go "rubbery" below 150 C. I had a similar requirement for a 100 mm skirting board about a metre long, and I put this in a cement asbestos gutter downpipe which I happened to have kicking around. Stood it vertical, fed the hose from a steam stripper in the bottom and ran it for 20 minutes or so. This easily made the wood sufficiently flexible to fit to a bowed chimney breast.
I suspect 100 C might not be hot enough for Corian. I imagine you could use a hot air paint stripper but might need to monitor the temperature to avoid overheating it at the hot end. Suitable containment might be a woodburner type flue liner, or the spiral wound aluminium ducting used for industrial ventilation systems.
For this size, you would probably get away with making a crude box from (say)plywood, hardboard, or plasterboard, perhaps with a blanket of roof insulation over the top (you want it to cool slowly). I think I might make a "table" from dexion, the same size as the "shelf". Put this on a patio / concrete hard standing with the "shelf" on top, make a U-shaped containment which you can easily lift on and off, cook it for a while (I would suggest at an hour), lift off the cover and if the corian has not "flattened" itself on to the "table" you can then apply clamps to the table. Put cover back on while it cools (hours).
First: are you sure they mean 150deg C? The data for Corian suggests that it is heat resistant up to 212degrees in those pesky American Fahrenheights but is damaged by excess heat. Warming it up to 150deg F isn't much of a problem and I could probably do it in my 1950s clothes drying cabinet.
Second, all forms of PVC and Polythene seem to melt or otherwise start to break down at too low a temperature so unless you have cheap and easy access to some metal tube...
I'd be tempted to take a sheet of aluminium or somesuch and turn up the edges to make a shallow oil bath. Most, but not all, cooking oils have a smoke point above 150deg C and, subject to the danger of uneven expansion causing the bath to distort and chuck hot oil everywhere, you could obtain the correct temperature there. But please double-check that 150deg C is correct!
Hmmm... reading the Wikipedia article on Corian, I think they may be thinking about thermoforming at those temperatures in which case, unless you are planning to manipulate the sheet between flat surfaces, the tools you use for bending may leave marks.
I would be a little cautious. Do some Googling on the properties of Corian; I've seen softening temperatures quoted as low as 110C
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and 260F
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(I assume F as the site is American; =127C) although with a longer holding temperature than you've suggested (30 minutes) to get it to deform.
Corian is poly-methyl-methacrylate PMMA. The filler, that gives the white translucency, is aluminium hydroxide, aka aluminium trihydrate, aka ATH, aka martifin. It's a fire retardant and decomposes at 220C.
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