Working with Acrylic sheets:
Acrylic is a versatile material that can be cut, drilled, laser cut and thermoformed.
Acrylic is a thermoplastic which means that when it is heated above 140-180°C it becomes flexible. This allows the material to be formed into the required shape or bent. Once the material cools below 85°C it becomes rigid again.
Acrylic sheets are often shaped using a CNC router or laser cutter. The edge of laser cut Acrylic has a pleasing polished look. If you look carefully at the edge of a piece of laser-cut Acrylic you can often see slight vertical lines that are caused by the pulses a laser uses when cutting.
If you want to get a perfectly smooth finish on the edge of a piece of machined Acrylic a polishing technique can be used. Typical polishing techniques include diamond polishing and flame polishing.
It also possible to etch the surface of an Acrylic sheet using a laser cutter. This can produce some very pleasing visual effects.
Tolerances: