Hi Ellen. Thanks!
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Nice project!
I like to use a tiny bit of uv resin to bond acrylic. It won’t harden until you zap it with the light, so you can optimize placement and wipe off spillage before hitting it with the light.
If you don’t have a uv resin lamp, an easy way to do it is get Bondic, which comes with its own tiny light.
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Huh. Did not know that. I’m going to check that out.
I’m reading the reviews on Amazon and they all complain about the resin remaining tacky. What, in your opinion is the best uv resin to use?
Well, I get the little 100 mL bottles of “hard type” UV resin from Amazon (there are hundreds of vendors) and use a cheap UV light used for curing gel nails. I expose for about 90 seconds, but you can give it a bit longer if it’s still tacky. The little Bondic resin pens might be a different kind of resin, since they only have like a 4 second expose time.
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But I’m wondering, specifically, which one you get? I won’t blame you if I don’t like it. I would, however, like to try a product that has a track record of working on the same thing I’m working on. It seems to be a sensible approach.
Here is the resin I’m using:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CWQ1FHQ?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_K9W7FRG53KTWEVRHE0V7
And lamps are super inexpensive, here’s one:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X48MKZF?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_A6R9RS5YD87W1S7GVY3S
Non affiliate links.
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Thank you!
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Great job! I had some luck with increasing the size of my pieces by 1 or 2% but the only software I have that does this is the Silhouette Designer Edition.
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Thanks! This sounds much easier than what I have been doing.
Cheap entry point, definitely going to try this out.
I work in Illustrator. I offset all my interior cuts by .18mm.
In my first, very simple, test cut I used circle, square, star and oval insets. The hard corner and more complex shapes fit snug at .17mm, but the round shapes needed .18 mm to stay put.
What I found, in this design, was that a few of the interior pieces to be a wee bit bigger than .18mm. But if I went too far- not only didn’t I derive benefit from a tight fit, the piece started to bow out.
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I really need to do some work in this area, and order the nontoxic Weld-On and whatever else is best (no epoxy or uv resin or anything like that for me). It’s something I have had on my list of things to work on but have not started yet! ugh. 
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Keep us up-to-date on what you find. I’d be really interested. I did not even know that there was a non-toxic Weld-On.
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Maybe I mispoke - I will have to refresh my memory to recall if one of them was nontoxic now because I am starting to get them mixed up. I think it was 4SC that I was looking at ordering but now that I look at it, that one doesn’t appear to be nontoxic.
This was a tough topic to research. Weld-on has two different websites. With the help of others, we finally identified the other site (the one that was not intuitive or easy to find). https://assemblyadhesives.com/
The resource that was found through this research is here:
Hope that helps if you need to figure out what will work best for you! 
The blue box shows the options that will work for cast acrylic pieces (with other cast acrylic pieces).
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There is a really great UV light source that shows up every morning. I just leave the part sitting outside and it does a very nice job 
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I love that idea! (Maybe not the most practical for us apartment dwellers though.) A few did that and we’re still frustrated with the results. (My husband says one needs restrict reading reviews on Amazon sometimes.)
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From what I was reading there may be some specific UV frequencies that work better than others depending on the specific chemistry of the material, So I figured out that the free source would have all of them
ps. you could experiment with the sunniest window even in an apartment.
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You are so optimistic! 
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I suppose there are many landlords that charge extra to be able to see the sun. I had friends that bought their places because they had a nice view of the ocean. Then when all the apartments had been sold he built another apartment and sold the same view again, while my friends ended up with a view of the narrow alley between 
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I like my apartment. I just have to use led lights to keep my herbs alive and they currently have squatting rights to all of my, very crowed, windows.
I had a friend who was very excited that when she stood on a chair, in her breakfast room, she could see the lake.
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