My picker texted me at the end of January that there was a Craiglist post in St. Louis selling 19 x 32" 1/4 cast acrylic for $5.00 a sheet. I texted back and forth with the seller and got a pic of the masking. Looked it up and it checked out. The acrylic looked pristine.
I was not able to get it picked up myself do to the Mexico trip. @cynd11 to the rescue! I let her know about the find and she was able to go and pick some up for her and get me 10 sheets. $5 per sheet. Inventables sells 1/4" clear cast acrylic for $9.00 a square foot. Do the math. It’s quite a find. Glowforge does have 1/4" clear acrylic in the shop but I hadn’t picked any up yet it got buried under other material and I forgot I had it. Will process this in Proofgrade Acrylic to see how the auto settings handle it.
I went to St. Louis for a funeral on Friday and let @cynd11 know I’d be coming through. I got to visit with her and her husband and her beautiful 4 cats. What a lovely home.
Once again I got food treats and gifts from her, including some laser amenities to help with my projects. I do not know which shop impressed me more, @cynd11’s stamp and card room or husband’s jewelry shop. Arg! I wasn’t able to stay long, but was there long enough to get a lesson in making a jump ring out of drawn silver wire for making jewelry. And I got a lesson in jewelry pliers.
Glowfriends are the best friends!
So now we need to figure out how to cut this acrylic. Engraving is no biggie because surface wise it is pretty much the same. I have never done 1/4" acrylic before but I know it has been done. As I looked through old posts I got a sense for what to shoot for. One thing I can note again: @dan has been so active in this forum and has liberally left tidbits of help and info all over the place.
Keep in mind I have a pre-release so your results may vary. I did three sets of cutting to test this out. The first set was too slow and under power. Didn’t quite go through the acrylic. Not even points on the corners came through.
The next set got a successful through cut at 100% power, 10 inches per minute, but the kerf was wider than I would have liked…
So I did one more test but this time with a lower power faster speed and doing the cut twice. 80/20 worked and 75/15 worked perfectly, barely making it through the masking on the other side. Kerf was nice. And the acrylic looked beautiful.
Next step is to make something out of it. I did the acrylic night lights with Proofgrade 1/8" but had do make a spacer piece so that the acrylic was firmly in the base.
I can use this 1/4" acrylic to make the reflector and engrave a slight depression in the mount section so that it fits snuggly.
Finished night light.
Only thing left is to find a source for the electronic bases.