Tools for working with acrylic?

"Ah, finally something I can help with. Hope I'm not too late. I make lots of cages out of acrylic. If there is a TAP plastic store in your area they are a great source. They usually have a scrap bin with cheap discarded ends. The best thing to cut acrylic panels with is a table saw. I use a 10 inch Dewalt saw with an 80 tooth triple chip blade, Freud is the blade mfgr. Scroll saws and band saws are not steady enough for a smooth cut. If you really want to be clean, you can run the acryloic panels through a router to remove 1/32 of an inch of material after the saw cut, this creates a really smooth edge for gluing. If you want to glue the joints, use free flowing glue in a plastic squeeze bottle with a needle tip, you will probably need some instruction, as it is a little hard to explain how to apply glue using this bottle, easy to do, hard to explain.

I cut slots in the top for ventilation, again using the table saw, although the router might do just as good of a job. I use acrylic hinges for the top and also acrylic hasps for a latch.

If you don't have the tools for this, I suggest finding a wood working store in your area, Rockler perhaps, and they can find you to some retired person that would be more than intrigued by this project and would help you, I'm sure.

Originally posted by lucille
Clay I have been looking at your excellent plans for reptile cages. Is there a reason you chose hinged doors instead of sliding doors?

The last post brought the thread back up and I realized Lucille asked me about the doors I used. I didn't see the question when it was first asked.

I use hinged doors from a personal preference. Sliding doors are more of a hassle for me. They can only expose half of the cage at a time, making cleaning and removing the animals a little more difficult.
There's the problem with substrate getting into the tracks, which aggravates me as well.
I also don't like to use keys to access cages, and have never devised an acceptable locking method that doesn't require one.
Hinged doors are just more functional for my uses.

I am having some new plastic cages made custom (yes, I'm actually buying some commercial cages ) for my rattlesnakes that utilize sliding doors but they are a special case.
Each cage will actually be two cages with a permenant divider in the middle. When one door opens, it will slide in front of the other cage exposing the full opening when I need it to.
I prefer top access cages for my venomous as a personal preference, but they are very space ineffecient. Hinged doors are not acceptable to me for use with hots. They leave a point of vulnerability when opening them since you have to get them open fairly far to actually do anything, but opening them a little leaves a gap for the snake right from the start.

I found an online TAP store, got the hinges and hasps and some acrylic glue (Weld-on 16) from a different online store and had a local glass company cut the side pieces.
When I can find some time, I will be drilling air holes and then assembling and gluing the cages. Any tips/techniques for drilling or gluing would be appreciated; I was thinking of using a 10cc syringe to pour some glue in so it could be applied more easily (I bought a gallon of glue because it was cheaper to do that than buy several small containers).

Having a glass company fabricate for you might be a bit more expensive, but it might work. There materials cut best with a table saw and an 80 tooth tripple chip blade. My best suggestion is to look around and find a carpenter that will help you as a favor/experiment. You could even buy a blade and that might provide an incentive for him or her to help.

The best glue to use is a free flowing acrylic glue. This stuff is like water. TAP sells a squeeze bottle with a syringe tip specially made as an applicator. The glue won't harm the materials this bottle is made out of.

A gallon of Weldon 16 is really a lot of glue!! Also, this glue is a bit thicker, but still really runny, and makes strings that have a tendancy to get on the panels making them unsightly.

First, let's cover the gluing technique. If you get a squeeze bottle with a syringe tip you can easily apply the glue, with a little practice. I would suggest practicing with water in the bottle, when you get that right you will feel much better about gluing and you won't run as much risk in ruining any panels. Fill the bottle 2/3 full with water. Holding the bottle upright, squeeze the bottle and force some of the air out through the syringe tip. While still squeezing the bottle, turn it upside down and stop squeezing. While the vaccuum is trying to pull air into the bottle, no water will come out of the tip. In such a manner, you can move the tip into the vacinity of the joint that you want to glue without dripping glue all over the acrylic panels. Again, I would practice this technique using water and two panels until you are comforatble that you can weld a clean joint without dripping all over the acrylic panels. Replace the water with Glue and you're ready to go, make sure everything is dry before introducing glue where there was water.

To assemble the panels, you want the bottom panel to reach all of the way to the outside of the cage and the sides and back to sit on top of the bottom. If the cage is rectangular I suggest that the back and the front are as long as the top and bottom, so that the ends of the cage sit inside of the back and the front. If you draw this out with paper and pencil I think it will make sense.

Place the bottom on a level surface and place the back panel where you want it to sit. Using the squeeze bottle technique described above, run a bead of glue (practice first with water!) along the joining edge of the panels. The liquid glue should wick between the panels and fill the microscopic voids between the bottom edge of the back panel and the top of the bottom panel. Hold these panels in place for a couple of minutes and they should be strong enough to stand while you work on the cage front panel. Just don't bump them, because they really aren't strong enough to move for about 30 minutes, and then move them very carefully becsaue they aren't fully welded for 24 hours.

Finish gluing up the sides to the bottom and to themselves, and then you can work on the lid. I use a one piece lid on hinges, and I use an acrylic hasp for a latch. I use #16 glue for these items, applied with a q-tip. I put some glue, which is quite a bit thicker than the liquid free flowing glue that I use on the panels, on some aluminum foil and apply it to the surfaces that I am gluing.

Hope this helps, I have made up about a dozen of these cages and find them very useful. I also use the acrylic to make tops for aquariums and use them for larger specimens, can't beat the price of tanks at Petco and places like that.

For ventilation, I cut slots using my table saw. I place the panels over the retracted saw blade and raise the blade up into the panel, creating an interior of the panel slot. I have tried drilling, but it is very slow and doesn't produce enough air flow. Another solution is to cut a piece out the the center of the lid and silicone a piece of screen into the hole, plastic screens are available which are less abrasive.

Hope this helps!

Val Campbell

Thank you for the wonderful directions Val! It all helps except for the table saw which I decided not to purchase when I was thinking of cages. I do have a special acrylic bit I sent off for, to drill air holes, I will practice on some scrap I have. If it does not work well, I was thinking of gluing on a backing of that white plastic pegboard Home Depot sells although I am not sure if the acrylic glue would work on that (do you know?).

Purchasing a table saw to do something like this would not be very economical, but there are always people around who are willing to help with projects. You could contact them through any local lumber yard, wood working supply store, Home Depot, True Value, Ace Hardware, Lowes, etc. The Yellow pages is a good place to start.

Acrylic glue is no good for peg board. Peg board is made of wood fiber, acrylic glue is actually a sovent that melts the plastic and welds it together. I suggest a good grade of silicone or possibly some urethane caulk instead. Best to mask off the edges near the items being glued if you are using silicone or urethane, and remove the masking as soon as you are done putting the pieces together. This will make your joints neat and of good appearance, and it will make it easier for you to work with since you are not a professional caulker. Peg board will work, but that makes the cage not washable and somewhat vulnerable to moisture from critter deposits, or as we call them, feces species!

Home Depot has a clean whire plastic pegboard, I was asking about that.

Not sure but I am going to go check it out. I have a very large Mexican Black Kingsnake that creates a lot of humidity inside of his cage when he is soaking and that might help.

Val

Please if you can, find out and post. The stuff is nice looking and very sturdy, and I can cut it without a table saw; if it can be used in my cage project that would be terrific.

tap plastics has every thing youll need, from tools to sheets of plastic.
thadd