How to cut plexiglass?

One of the advantages of plexiglass, or, as it is also called, plexiglass, is the ease of machining with a sufficiently high material strength. However, despite the existing advantages, there are certain inconveniences. The thing is that plexiglass melts very easily, and when working with it, this can cause some difficulties. As a result, the question of how to cut plexiglass in order to avoid them will be quite reasonable.

Machining methods

Plexiglass can be sharpened, drilled, milled and machined in many other ways. There are even special machines for these purposes, although sometimes ordinary equipment is enough. So, in large industries, plexiglass is cut using lasers, but this is impossible at home. So how can ordinary craftsmen cut plexiglass? For this they use:

  • special cutters;
  • heated nichrome wire;
  • saws.

Plexiglass knife

This method is ideal when it is necessary to make straight long cuts, for example, to obtain a plexiglass plate. What a similar knife looks like is shown in the figure:

As a rule, it is independently made from a piece of a saw blade for cutting metal, although other material can be used for this purpose. A sheet of plexiglass is placed on a flat hard surface, marked and a ruler is applied along the site of the future cut. Holding the ruler, it is necessary to draw a knife several times along the marked line, deepening half the thickness of the material.

This is enough, then the sheet can simply be broken by hand, as shown in the figure.

An example of cutting plexiglass in a similar way is shown here:

Using a hacksaw or other similar tool

In this case, almost any saw, most often a hacksaw for metal, a jigsaw or other similar tool acts as this. With this cutting method, it should be borne in mind that plexiglass has poor thermal conductivity and the heat released at the cutting site melts the material itself. The result is often the fusion of the cut after passing the hacksaw.

To avoid this, water is often used to cool the cutting site.

You can greatly facilitate work by using a power tool (electric saw, jigsaw or grinder). For the best cut quality, the tool should run at high RPM. How all the work is done is shown here:

Using heating

In this case, a heated nichrome wire is used. The general principle of operation should be clear from the given figure.

A nichrome wire is stretched between the two holders, to which voltage is applied. Its size is selected in such a way that the wire is red-hot, after which it is able to cut plexiglass.

In finished form, such a thread can be fixed in a jigsaw or in some other device, for example, as shown here:

The quality of the cut is quite satisfactory, there is no debris and waste in the process of work, the most important thing is to choose the right heating mode.

Not all of the methods by which you can cut plexiglass are described here, but they are used more often than others when performing such work.

One of the operations that DIYers often have to deal with is cutting plexiglass. For these purposes, you can use a saw, a special knife, heated nichrome wire. It is with their help that craftsmen most often cut plexiglass.

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