HI Guys… I’m working on a project and I’m looking for a semi-flexible acrylic that won;t snap against if hit with a hard impact. Does anyone know of an acrylic with such charactertistics that can be cut on the GF?
Thanks!
joe
I don’t know how thick you need, or how flexible, but Johnson Plastics Plus has a very wide variety of acrylic types. Their Lucent product is one such item as is FlexiBrass.
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I’m going to move this to everything else.
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Can you give us a rough idea of what you’re doing? Do you need to just bend the acrylic once or do you need it to remain flexible? How much of a bend? 1/16th is a bit flexible, but not extremely so. But you can bend other thicknesses of acrylic with heat… I think it will need to be annealed to make it less brittle, but I am not the best person for that question.
Acrylics do not absorb impact, you would need to use polycarbonate material, like Lexan, to have impact resistance.
flexible and impact resistant are not the same thing.
flexibility, the opposite of stiffness, is the measure of resistance to deformation when a force is applied. impact resistance, or toughness, is the measure of ability to absorb impact without shattering.
plexiglass, hdpe, even HIPS would be quite impact resistant, but none of them laser well.
there might be grades of acrylic with rubber added, but you might need to check the material properties…
Plexiglass is acrylic. It’s far from being the first choice for impact-resistant plastic but there are no issues processing it by laser… you may be thinking of Polycarbonate (Lexan).
correct, I meant polycarbonate. thanks
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