Standing

It never occurred to me to anneal 3d printed parts. Reading that led me to do some searching and I found a mention of using hot water for annealing.
This leads me to; Why not do the same for acrylic. If indeed 180° is adequate for annealing this should be easy. Plus it solves any issues with a slow cool down. You could use a Sou Vide cooker. If you’re concerned with acrylic and a device used for food production vacuum sealing the part should eliminate that.
Thoughts?

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Nice job! And I agree with your son…the yellow acrylic goes nicely with the green.

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Thanks! I’ll let him know! :slight_smile:

I used our kitchen oven.
Acrylic did not smell much at that low of a temperature, and the kitchen exhaust fan took care of the issue.
It was a hell of a lot less smelly then cutting the pieces on the Glowforge.

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good idea but also be aware that acrylic can take on water and warp.

My first floor smelled like lasered acrylic for about 2 hours. I don’t love the smell, yet I don’t hate it. :wink: Smells like making things.

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Maybe if people do a lot of acrylic and need to anneal for strength they could get a cheap toaster oven so that they aren’t contaminating their food:

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That’s exactly what I was thinking, though I admit I don’t know how well it would work. Seems to me they go low enough in temp, only real limit I see would be size.

You’d need to get an infrared or convection toaster oven so you can even heat. A standard toaster oven has its bottom two coils (or is it technically one coil?) close to the bottom rack, so you’d have uneven heat on whatever you are annealing.

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Or, you could buy the cheap toaster then drill a hole and feed compressed air in gently to circulate it around. Or install a fan in the cheap toaster, also pretty easy.

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Why not just get a cheap electric smoker?

You can get one easily for under $200. You can even get them down around 50, if you’re doing smaller stuff. And then you also have multiple racks you can put items on. You don’t have to use the smoke. You can put it outside on the porch.

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I still feel like the bottom coils are too close. In the one we have, the coils are less than ⅜" from the bottom of the rack. Maybe if you had one that only had top coils that are several inches away, compressed air or a fan would work.

I use a toaster oven (Dedicated for Non-Food) sometimes for curing powdercoat on small items.

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Maybe some aluminum foil, shiny side down, would even it out along with airflow.

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Sous vide with a bag to keep the work piece from contact with water? It doesn’t have to be vacuum sealed, just submerged with weights, and an open top.

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I have a good-sized convection-toaster-oven that I picked up at goodwill for like 12 bucks, just missing the drip pan. I “fabricated” one instead of buying a replacement.
(And by fabricated, I mean that I cut a section of heavy-duty aluminum foil to fit in the bottom where the drip pan used to be)

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Maybe soux vide it the same way you do food – in a plastic bag with the air squeezed out?

Edit: Oops, I see @GrooveStranger beat me to it!

Been meaning to try annealing, both sous vide and with my 15" x 15" t-shirt heat press. I just haven’t had a fragile acrylic situation I badly needed to solve yet. So many projects…

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