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Lightweight and Stackable

pgwdragons

pgwdragons

GHC Exotics
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Hey guys. Ive seen a ton of people and companies that use ABS plastic.. to make some pretty darn neat cages. Heck, through some trading years ago, a friend of mine got a very small one, that was eventually used to house scorpions.. But heres my question.. Where can you get this stuff? Ive seen some awesome cages built out of it, and very easy to clean and Like I said.. STACK!
The unit that I use to house my females in is HUGE.. and extremely HEAVY. Which obviously.. can cause several problems.. Its a complete wood unit.. that is 4 ft. by 8 ft. Long.. and probably 6 ft. tall all together.. two seperate levels.. top and bottom.. and with the sand in it.. you cant budge it.. heck.. with the help of all your friends.. you cant budge it... you would have to remove all the sand.. and then still take parts off it to get it go anywhere.. Its a real pain. But is a nice setup. I would love to have a semi smaller area cage.. that I could stack.. and be able to move.. without having an entire army of people to just move and clean around it. And heck, Id like to get some to also custom make some individual cages for my males. I duno.. just figured I would see if anyone knew where you can buy this material? Thanks for all your input!!
 
That material is expensive and you usually have to purchase by the pallet. A friend of mine is going to be getting into cage building and he was describing some of the pricing to me and I was certainly surprised. To get the product to build a couple cages will set you back a pretty penny.
 
I have worked with ABS and thought it was just okay. Without going into a lot of detail, my three main gripes with it were:

1) Pretty darn heavy. A 1/4" sheet weighs about the same as a sheet of 1/2" Celtec 550, which is one of the lighter expanded PVC sheets. Most people are surprised at how heavy solid (i.e. non-foamed/non-expanded) plastic can be and ABS is no exception.

2) Flexible.

3) Hard to explain, but when you cut it the edges tend to harden and fray from the heat of the blades or bits you use. This makes it a lot harder to get a smooth edge for solvent welding the material together.

Now, with all that said, the two sheets I bought were priced well compared to other products and once you have the proper edge it is fairly forgiving to solvent weld. I also remember it as being easier to clean than expanded PVC.

If you can find a supplier who can CNC cut the material for you I think it's a fine choice for smaller cages, maybe around 36x24x24 or smaller. Anything bigger than that and I think you'd have to design around the natural flexibility of this material.

But I still prefer 1/2" expanded PVC for cages that size and up to 48x24x24. Especially if you plan to do the cutting yourself.

It sounds like you want to build something larger than that and be able to stack the cages and then have them hold a large amount of sand? Is that correct?

If so, I'm not sure what to tell you.

I have built two projects out of hollow core doors. One was a large rack and the other a tall double-stack of cages which ended up being converted into tool storage in my shop.

Overall I'm very impressed with the weight-to-strength ratio of hollow core doors and I would tend to steer you in that direction.

But it really depends on the size of each individual cage and how much sand they need to hold.
 
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