tips on cutting plastic

[GaryLaroff]

I've cut plastics successfully with scroll saws on a smaller scale that might lead to the right answer.  The blades Tom Bellemare showed have large gullets between the teeth on the suggested blade.  With scroll sawing I found that the blade with the longest distance between teeth seemed to cause the least friction, heating the plastic the least and giving the best results.  Regardless of number or coarseness of teeth, the blades with the least "chip clearance" between teeth caused the most mess.

Touch up with sandpaper on a hand sanding block worked best for me.

I second the advice of staying away from the bandsaw.  I have a powerful shopvac dedicated to the bandsaw, did some successful cutting of plastic but had a horrendous cleanup job afterwards.

Gary

 

[GhostFist]

Try cutting a 4x8 sheet of 1" thick plexi on a cabinet saw (never mind just getting it up on the saw) if you want to talk about nerve racking. oh ya no splitter either, hows that for an exercise in stupid? It was years ago, cuts came out perfect but I was drenched in sweat after the whole thing. Never again!!....

Just imagine how easy it would have been with the TS55.  I couple of years ago I cut a piece of decorative polycarbonate for a front door.  This stuff was really cool, it had bamboo and little flowers in the center so the whole thing looked like some sort of flowering bamboo trees.  I was told the flowers were real.  If memory serves it was $1600 for a 4x8 sheet.  Super easy to cut with the TS55. [thumbs up]

Damn straaight! perfect job for a track saw! I'd just refuse to push that through a cabinet saw out and out now.

 

[kevinvandeusen]

Www.Baddogtools.com. Has a great device that will do it.  Have used it several times

 

[Deansocial]

Spam

 

[upscale]

i have tried speed up and down, rougher blade ,fine blade,.
the only way iv found is go really fast but thats not accurate enough. have you got any tips on cutting it.

I used a palm router to trim some polycarbonate that was cut too large for me. The edges were wavy which isn't what I wanted. However, I then happened upon using a card scraper to quickly clean up those edges and then went straight to polishing them. Very quick and time saving.

 

[GhostFist]

Card scraper is good, also careful torching