Bling Box and Tray

Maybe you could add some kind of filler on those plates to do… another project :stuck_out_tongue:

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Did you have to peel off the protective paper on each tiny bit, or did you remove it before cutting?

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Yes if you are going to glue it, kerf adjusting is not necessary. (The kerf adjusting part took very little time though - even on the individual tiles, because you just do them all at once.)

Yes, I could have, except I was pretty much using up all of the available mirrored scrap - there wasn’t room to get a tray frame on them. (The tiles are already tiny.) I can still use those tiles - all I have to do is cut a couple more background frames. (I need to get some more black acrylic in here - I’m out. Just had the one sheet.) :slight_smile:

Yes, it’s hand drawn in Illustrator, and the tiles and frame are rounded to take the pressure off of the acrylic corners and keep it from splitting. OpenSCAD would create perfect little rhomboids, and they would be interchangeable anywhere. (These are not technically rhomboids anymore after the corner rounding.)

OpenSCAD would be a lot easier, but it would also wind up looking a lot more mechanical, and I was shooting for the hand-made touch for this one.

Yep, they would work very well in a mosaic, with something like plaster, and I might do that with them one day - for something like that I wouldn’t necessarily have to have them fit precisely and I could just get them “close enough for government work”. :grin:

Uhm, yes, and I forgot to mention that part. :confounded: Horribly time consuming. I had the tiles masked on both sides to keep from damaging the backing that makes it mirrored.

One benefit to finally figuring out that duct tape would pick up all the bits at the same time, was realizing that it would also get the masking off when I picked the correct bit off of the tape. So for the last set (the green) I only had to deal with the specific tiles I was using, and I could pick off all the rest of the bits later. :slight_smile:

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You can relieve the stress in acrylic by annealing it like glass - an hour in the oven at 170F will do.

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Wow @Jules remarkable jobs…I can see you flicking your hand and running around in circles to get the glue off (BTW…that’s what I’d be doing) love the color matrix.

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That is only 80C so I would place it on the bed of one of my 3D printers with some insulation over the top. Should be much more accurate than a domestic oven.

I often use my printer’s beds for curing glue quickly.

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Those are gorgeous, thanks for showing it and to explain everything to us … now I know what I have to have in mind if I want to try one of these :smiley:

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Absolutely gorgeous! Please tell me more about the octagonal box. Did you cut and stack a series of octagons then glue them together?

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Your picture is so cool. Looks like lots of little jewels. :grin:

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Good question! I wasn’t clear if Jules made the box and tray as well, or if these were pre-made items that she then inlayed.

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Chuckle! That’s one of the reasons why i considered this project such a valuable learning experience for me!
(I wasn’t expecting the fit to be so fiddly on the tiles after I kerfed it! :smile:)

In reality though, if I had not let all the tiles fall out after cutting them, it would have still been quicker to kerf adjust it, and more useful for future projects. Rounding the corners, like kerf adjusting, is just a couple of clicks in Illustrator with the plugin that I use. It can be applied to all of the tiles, and the matrix, at the same time…it’s a lot quicker than an hour in the oven.)

Oh, and another thing i forgot to mention, but it’s important - I picked up that mirrored acrylic scrap off of EBay, so its provenance is iffy. I examined it before using it in the machine and since it looked like it had been lasered before rather than cut, (smooth edges rather than sharp), I decided to try it. But I didn’t like it much and plan to be pretty sparing with it. Some of the colors, the blue in particular, REALLY stink when they are lasered, and I don’t want something like that in my oven. The laser vents outside so I felt safe enough using it with me in the room, and the venting is extremely good with the Glowforge. You don’t smell anything at all while the cutting is happening - you only smell the residue after the print job finishes.

The black laser-ready acrylic from Instructables however, didn’t smell nearly as bad, and the smell dissipated quickly. So there is a very good reason why @dan and crew are telling people to use laser-ready materials in the machine, in order to get best results…they aren’t kidding! :open_mouth:

(And I’ll be testing the Proofgrade later, and will report on it - I’m just trying to decide which project to use it on.)

Chuckle! Thanks, and it was an immediate dash to the kitchen, cussing quite fluently, to try to save the box. I failed by the way - the box is going to have to be recut. Getting that solvent on it ruins the finish on the shiny black acrylic. (It’s okay, I’ve got lots of the little spare tiles to make another one.)

Thanks, and yes that’s how it goes together - bunch of octagonal rings on top of a solid octagon for the base. I only had one small sheet of the black acrylic, so it’s not a very tall box. :grin:

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Can you think of a reason you couldn’t sous vide it at 170F/77C?

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In the event of glue damaging a complicated time consuming piece, the surface could be recut.
I have polished automotive acrylic enamel paint films with graduated wet/dry paper from 400/600/1000/ 1500 followed by ‘final cut’ then ‘swirl remover’ buffing compound.

There are also compounds for plastic polishing on a buff, you just need to be careful not to overheat and melt it

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Novus

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Thank you!
Novus plastic polish :wink:

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It’s interesting the different smells of acrylic when it get’s heated. It must be the different polymers used to make the acrylic. I use it a bit for pen turning, I wear a respirator when turning but the room always smells after. Since you were just cutting, not engraving, I guess it didn’t matter if it was cast or extruded acrylic?

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Extruded acrylic stinks when its cut…cast not so much

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Oh and before I forget again…@jamesdhatch, @printolaser, and @smcgathyfay …these tips for annealing and polishing the plastic most definitely need to be in the Tips for Completely Inexperienced Newbies wiki! :smile:

I don’t know what it was…but yeah, cutting it only, so cast vs. extruded didn’t matter. I might try engraving some somewhere down the road to see which it is.

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I am surprised there are so many differences between cast and extruded acrylic considering they are both the same polymer. I found this useful page: http://www.pmma.dk/acryl_stobt_kontra_ekstruderet.aspx?Lang=en-GB

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Cast and extruded (and pretty much any other way of creating) steel exhibit extremely different characteristics as well. Material science is its own deep dark pit you can get lost in for a life time if you are interested :joy:

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