Renewed Optimism - Small Box

I stuck it in the oven at 170 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour at the end of the process. I haven’t noticed deformities doing that; but I place acrylic on aluminum foil so that even if it did melt into a pile of stinky goo it wouldn’t ruin the oven.

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is your oven unusably stinky now?

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No. I have noticed no effects at all in my oven after annealing acrylic. I wish I could say the same for tonight’s dinner.

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Thanks so much for the svg. I also made me tha box n I love the design

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It looks really nice. Good job!

It’s possible that this is a DUMB question, but why did you anneal the acrylic?

Not a dumb question! Annealing makes it less brittle.

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Some acrylic is dandy and strong. Some acrylic gets fractures around cuts. Cutting, gluing, snapping together, or other strains on acrylic may result in weakness.

A lot of my acrylic came from cutoffs and scrap bins.

Annealing isn’t always necessary; but it does protect against fractures.

Particularly in older or brittle stock.

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Thank you for being generous with your design! It worked great for me once I resized the SVG in illustrator from 4" to 3". ! I’m looking forward to making more of these boxes with different designs & materials. I’m curious: did you come up with this design from scratch, or did you start off with some basic template? The interlocking mechanisms are very clever.

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You box came out very nice. I like the design you put on it!

I did come up with the design from scratch. I kind of wish it had some mechanism to keep the inner box from just slipping through the outer box. Oh well. Next time.

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@polarbrainfreeze, sorry if I missed it, but what software did you use to render the image way back at the start of this thread?

I did that in Fusion 360.

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Oh man, I’m so glad I found this post. I’ve been looking for inspiration on a glueless box and this is giving me some ideas. Thank you!!! :slight_smile:

But here’s one of these I lasered for myself.

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Looks great! :grinning:

Nice job!

Tell me more about the surface it’s sitting on! That looks suspiciously forged and quite interesting in and of itself…

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Good question! That’s one of my Pai Sho boards that thanks to Glowforge, I make and sell. See SkudPaiSho.com and https://www.instagram.com/skudpaisho/ for more about what that is :slight_smile:

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Follow-up question: What “settings” did you use for annealing? Did you bake this in your oven? Temp and time? As separate red/black layers or together? :blush:

Oooh.
Do a search in the forums to confirm this… but low temp for an hour.

My kitchen oven at 200 or 225 degrees Fahrenheit? Something like that.
Well Cooler than the melting point. You don’t want to distort; just relax.

I set my acrylic on aluminum foil-lined cookie sheet - so I don’t have to wonder if my cookies are infused with plastic later on.

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Do we think this will seal the joints - to make them waterproof?