From: "Brian Cox" <ojaibees@ojai.net>
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: <Personal_Submersibles@psubs.org>
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Acrylic laminating
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 09:09:19 -0800
Hi, I have an idea that perhaps has not been considered before with
respect to acrylic domes / viewports. First off let me say that there
is a good chance that this would generally be a bad idea but since I
don't know that much about the structure of acrylic I will proceed.
I've noticed with acrylic sheets that they can be laminated together
with some type of bonding agent. I've seen this in large pieces of
acrylic art work. They do this to add color in places and for other
effects. I'm wondering if a dome was made using say 2" thick acrylic
sheets laminated together so that you had say 5 sheets of 2" acrylic
laminated together that would make it so you could have a 9" dome radius
if you machined the interior. Or if the 2" sheets were cut into donuts
first you would have a lot less machining to do to make the final dome.
So the finished product would be an acrylic dome 2" thick made up of
five layers of acrylic. The question is how thorough is the bonding
between the layers of acrylic? And if a dome was made like this and
then taken down to depth what would be the destruction characteristics
that would occur? I doubt that the handbook for acrylic for
submersibles addresses this idea but there may be some hint of it if it
addresses laminating acrylic. The chemical that is used to bond the
sheets is like an acetone type, I believe, and the sheets are
essentially bonded chemically in this way but I am not very
knowledgeable on the details. If this was a viable method it could
reduce the cost of producing a dome. I'm ready to be shot down!
Brian Cox