Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets  

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

extruded acrylic is cheaper than cast acrylic, and can make whatever you're looking at look "warped" because of the lower quality. i guess it's also less clear than cast acrylic. the cheapest place i've found for the cut sheets is printedsolid.com. they have the sheets cut in cast acrylic for $60 plus free shipping. i contacted a local plastic place (nashville) and they quoted me $73 for extruded acrylic sheets cut to those sizes....so i went with printedsolid.

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

Christopher,

Thank you for the information about cast vs extruded acrylic.

I checked out PrintedSolid.com, but I didn't see any information about custom sized acrylic. They did have pre-cut acrylic sheets for a LACK cabinet, which won't for me because mine is not a LACK table cabinet.

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

Heyo,

I just got done with building my enclosure. I got my Plexi shipped from https://www.tapplastics.com/ for $56.72 shipped (UPS Ground) to Texas. I just went with the Extruded Acrylic. Only problem with the site is they use imperial measurements cause 'murica. But here are the sizes I used. (stolen from the comments on the blog post)

440mm is 17-5/16″
220mm is 8-5/8″ (erring on the low side, it’s actually closet to 8-11/16″)

Hope this helps! Good luck with the project, I actually had a ton of fun putting mine together and am extremely happy with the results.

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

Hello:

I ordered the plexiglass sheets for my enclosure from printedsolid.com. Lack acrylic $60. No shipping fees. It was well packaged and got here in three days. Cut to size and ready to go. I am most pleased and I would recommend them.

It was less cost than getting it locally, and I probably could have gotten it a little cheaper if I shopped around, but I figured why not support a small business in the industry who took the initiative to find and order and have it all precut and ready to go without hassle. I saw someone’s post about it here and checked it it. I am glad I did.

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

Cast VS Extruded, there's also other things to consider:

Laser cutting

When laser cutting extruded acrylic , there will come a burr on one side of the part. On the cast acrylic there is almost no burrs. The edges on extruded acrylic parts can look a bit different depending on the direction of the acrylic extrusion.

Thickness tolerance

Sheets of cast acrylic vary more in thickness. A cast 3 mm acrylic sheet vary +/- 15%. While an extruded sheet only vary +/- 5%. The dispersion within the tolerance also seems to be less on extruded sheets.
The high tolerance on cast acrylic sheets often comes as a surprise to designers, with many construction errors to follow.

Scratch-resistant

Cast acrylic is more scratch resistant than extruded acrylic.

More pros and cons:

http://www.pmma.dk/Acryl_stobt_kontra_ekstruderet.aspx?Lang=en-GB

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

I recommend checking how stable your build is before getting Plexi. I was not happy with the wobbling and ended up putting wood sides on the desk to improve stabilization.

Re: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

Hi Lucas... The Top, back, and bottom will be wood. Its the front and sides that will be acrylic. I just need to find a decent price for the custom sizes.

If I was doing an IKEA Lack table enclosure than the $60 pre-cut sheets would be fine.

RE: Clear Acrylic/Plexiglass sheets

we always buy acrylic sheet (plexiglass) from https://mrplexi.ir/%d9%be%d9%84%da%a9%d8%b3%db%8c/ with best price and really fast delivery.