Putting Together Acrylic

I was curious how exactly the acrylic was attached together in things like the vendor displays. Is it an epoxy of some sort?

Originally Posted by TripleMoonsExotic

I was curious how exactly the acrylic was attached together in things like the vendor displays. Is it an epoxy of some sort?

Methyl-ethyl-ketone. It's a solvent that melts the acrylic for a few seconds. When the solvent wears off, the two pieces harden again, fused together.

I remember that from junior high, mainly because I love saying the word out loud.

Methyl Ethyl KeeeeTooooone, yep.

Weld-on 16 is the name of a commercial preparation that welds acrylic pieces together, I used it in making some acrylic cages and it is very effective.

Originally Posted by TripleMoonsExotic

I was curious how exactly the acrylic was attached together in things like the vendor displays. Is it an epoxy of some sort?

Like the other posters said, it is welded together with a solvent rather than heat.

To be a bit more specific, most of the time builders take two panels of acrylic and use masking tape to hold them together with the edge of one piece butting up against the surface of another. Typically the paper wrap is left on both panels other than the areas that are being welded together.

With the two panels taped together and held at 90* the solvent is then drawn up in a sryinge and injected along the outside of the joint where the two panels meet. The solvent wicks into the joint via capillary action and the two pieces melt together.

Solvent welding acrylic is pretty easy. The hard part is prepping the edge of the panel that is being welded to the surface of the other. It has to be pretty much perfect.

If your making a cube of some sort then you also have to make sure that your panels are perfect square and sized correctly so they match up with the rest of the structure. The difficulty is in the cutting and edge prepping. Large scale acrylic shops have expensive machinery that does this quickly and accurately.

These solvent welds are very strong. Even with super large acrylic aquaria the entire thing is held together with solvent welds. Given the pressure that 400 lbs of water can exert on something as modest as a 55 gallon aquarium I think the strength of the welds is pretty good.

Interesting...

I wanted to have some acrylic displays made a specific way with a certain color. I located a company that has what I want & will cut to whatever sizes I need. I just was unsure how to make it work.

I'll have Chris look at this post so he knows what he's going to have to do (because I'm not going to be the one to mess this up!).

Make sure you get some scrap cuts to practice with! I had a link somewhere to a very good site that had a how-to on joining acrylic (but for aquariums). I'll have to find that. But it said that it takes a bit of practice to get the solvent to flow the right way so the join isn't filled with air bubbles, and they recommended practicing a few times before joining the actual main pieces. They also used pins between the pieces to leave a tiny little space for the solvent to wick into.

Found the link! Here it is... http://www.cichlid-forum.com/article...c_aquarium.php - I really have to try this someday. have to finish my kitchen first though!

Thank you very much, Lauren. I never thought to go to an aquatics site for the information.

Originally Posted by TripleMoonsExotic

Thank you very much, Lauren. I never thought to go to an aquatics site for the information.

There is a ton of good information on that and other aquatics forums that is useful to us herpers. I have absolutely gotten lost in the archives of that forum in the past.

And I agree, it is about the best place to learn about working with acrylic.