Am I insane!?!

[Joe S.]

I'm looking at a brand new PSI catalog and noticed the display stands. The "Economy Acrylic Display Stands" caught my eye and (uh-oh) I started to think, could I do something like that with plexiglass? They have a 90+ angle on there and I can see a lot of snapping and melting happening and was wondering, How would one DO that? Am I mad? Should I save myself the trouble and just (choke) spend the money and buy one? Please tell me if you have ever done something like this. Thanks
P.S. Those new bolt action pens are awesome!!

 

[paintspill]

put the plexi glass between 2 plates of some kind to give you a crisp line and start heating with a plumbing type torch. heat very slowly and carefully. a little too much heat at any spot will cause blistering and burning. grab some scraps and practice. i've done it a few times

and screwed it up everytime. but that is the basic principle.

 

[eupher58]

Or a heat gun

 

[Joe S.]

I'll give it a try then! Too bad there is no "ugly other non-pen project" contest.

 

[wolftat]

Cheaper and easier to just buy them...DAMHIKT

 

[JRay8]

not difficult but $$$ to get the right stuff. look up Tap plastics on youtube for their how too videos.

 

[phillywood]

Joe, look up the palstic supplier in your town, but i checked into this before and ther is actually like a metal brake gadget that heats up to the right tenp. so you can bend the plexi glass with it or manipulate it, but it si not cheap though. Like they said above you use heat gun or torch then you are asking for trouble.

 

[Frank Nemke sr]

You can make a heater with a small brazing rod, a reo-stat" Dimmer switch" You need to insalate the ends so you can handle it. Do you remember the one cup water heaters? It was a coil with a plastic handle and a power cord. Same prince able, But you need to control the heat

 

[ctubbs]

Use your toaster oven to heat the plastic and then place it on a bending jig to forn the shape you need and allow to cool. Always worked for me. YMMV
Charles

 

[Carl Fisher]

The trick is to bend it without distorting it to the point where you wouldn't want to display and also dealing with polishing the edges makes the couple of $$ per stand not such a bad deal to just buy them.

 

[JohnGreco]

I remember working on bending sheets of plexi back in tech ed in college. There was MUCH experimentation on how high to heat the oven and how long to leave them in there. Once we had that, we threw them into a jig we made to bend them uniformly, but I'll say this much. I'm glad all of our failures came out of the school budget and not our pockets LOL!

 

[low_48]

You can cold bend polycarbonate to a 90 degree angle. I do it all the time at work in a sheet metal brake. The stuff is really soft, that's why it works as bullet proof.

 

[el_d]

I used the edge of a square pan( Griddle) with some baking paper(parchment paper?) between the acrylic and the metal.

Place the acrylic where you want it to bend on the edge of the pan and turn on the stove(Electric). As it heats the pan the "Warming edge" will soften the acrylic allowing you to bend the acrylic on your line.

Worked great, but then I chose not to use the stands.......

 

[PenMan1]

It's sorta like changing your own oil in your automobile. IN THEORY, you should be able to buy some oil and a filter and save some coin on the oil change.

IN REALITY, by the time you go (30 miles, round trip, in my case) to get the oil and filter (that's $8 in gas), get home and realized that you can get to the oil drain without ramps, etc (another $8 in gas) and $80 more dollars for ramps. THEN, realize that your filter wrench won't fit the new filter (another $8 in gas) and $10 for a new wrench.

After the first oil change, I realized that a $15 oil change on Tuesday (1/2 mile from home) and every 11th oil change is free) was a pretty good deal.


Let's see..... To bend that plexi, you'll need a $10 sheet of plexi, a $50 heat gun, materials to make a binding jig.. OR, you might just check to see if they'll sell that $15 stand a little cheaper on TUESDAY!

Submitted with tongue in cheek.

 

[Ted iin Michigan]

I didn't think it was a divine order that the plexi be BENT. I made a plexi multi-pen display stand. I cut the pieces on the table saw useing a plywood/crosscut blade - raised it just a hint higher than the plexi. Then I glued the pieces together with medium CA. Worked fine. Suggest a single pen stand could be made the same way. Might not be quite as elegant looking as a heat formed one, but hey........

 

[LeeR]

As a friend of mine (who has a very elaborate machine shop) often says:

"Why buy that _________ (fill in the name of some gizmo), when we can make it for about twice the cost?"