Recently I made a suggestion for fastening magnets to acrylic: clear adhesive tape.
Glue is difficult because most glues don’t like the smooth surfaces of magnets and acrylic, and it’s all too easy to make a mess of your shiny project. Friction fitting is a no-go because acrylic doesn’t tolerate pressure: it crazes or cracks.
But tape is an inelegant solution.
The other day dan offered an interesting approach which he uses to insert bearings in fidgets: a 24-petal cutting pattern which absorbs pressure from friction fitting but still holds tight.
I call the design a sunflower.
In Inkscape I imported the image he posted, traced a petal with the Bezier tool, multiplied it using the Clone tool, cleaned up the nodes, combined the paths, then resized it to 8mm magnets and cut a sunflower in some scrap acrylic. After a few trials I had it nailed. The magnet resisted, then grudgingly entered the center of the sunflower. And it held there. I then remodeled some rulers which use magnets. They work great.
The Clone tool is kind of fun so I decided to make some variants while the process was fresh in my mind.
Here is Dan’s original 24-petal design along with two variations: 20 and 32 petals.
All are 3 inches outside diameter.
To use them, resize the center to a bit smaller than the diameter of your magnet. Set the GF to Cut (not Score, not Engrave) the sunflower path. Make trial cuts in acrylic to adjust the fit.
Then import them and add them to your design.
So far I have only tried the 24-petal sunflower. I’ll be curious to see if the others are as good or better.
Acrylic Sunflowers.svg.zip (10.8 KB)