Lucite Carving

[johnthefourth]

I am tyring to v-carve some ornaments out of .25 clear lucite sheet. Does anyone have experience with this material? I am having troubles with feed and speed, the chips re-weld to the cut or worse gum up the bit tip.

[stevem]

Joe, try reducing your spindle RPM to around 16,000 and your feed speed to 60 IPM.

[elcruisr]

I've done some but it's a trial by fire at best. The problem is that a v-bit has all the wrong geometry for cutting plastics and it's really not possible to find one that is. I suspect the cost of designing and producing such a low demand tool would be prohibitive. Anything more than a very shallow cut generally does not work well.

With what is essentially a straight sided tool the idea in plastics is to turn as slow as you can while feeding as fast as you can. Trouble is in v carving that's not going to give you good results cosmetically. Go for very shallow passes at lower rpms and hope for the best.....

[jseiler]

its best to use cast acrylic over extruded acrylic. Cast cuts significantly cleaner.

John

[johnthefourth]

Thanks for the input, I am trying some of the above suggestions and will post any acceptable results info for future users. Does anyone have anyinformation on the SLOWEST advisable spindle speed per inch? I obviously want to avoid snapping or damaging a bit, but also dont want to stress the spindle. Thanks-
-John

[radavis]

we cut some lucite where I work, we have to engrave them with the people name and there department, we used about 12000 to 16000 RPM with a farly fast feed, we also spray WD40 on before we started and while the job is running, WD40 will lub the bit and the lucite and keep it from sticking, we also used Isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol)it worked well but the WD40 works the best.
Robert