Brian,
I was thinking on about the same. Personally I think it will work. If sawed
in donuts first , the inner part can be recycled. As a cnc machining specialist
I can advice the flollowing production sequence:
-saw donuts
-turn the inner radius of each slice on a cnc lathe *precise*
-bond the slices together matching the inner radius *precise*
-Clamp the dome internal and machine the outside
-sand and polish
When I visited a large sea aquarium, I saw they bonded the 300 mm thick(!)
acrylic but it was very little visable. maybe on a smaller scale it is even less
visable. The local technical plastics company can supply up to 100 mm acrylic so
that means less slices.
The stress comes in the form of tension and a little bit shear . There is a
great bonding area (what wall thiknes do you think about??) I dont think this
will prove a problem on psubbing depth.
What does a factory made 9"dome cost anyway ??
regards, Emile van Essen
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2004 6:09
PM
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Acrylic
laminating
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
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