Following on from my previous post, where I
sugested it may be possible to form a dome
by stacking & glueing several rings of acrylic
on top of each other, I contacted my
acrylic fabricator & put the idea past him. He
thought that it was entirely feasable &
considered the joins invisible unless I was looking
straight through them. He said he had
100mm thick cast acrylic sheet wich would require 3
sections & 2 joins for the size I need.
He also had a large 2 axis router comming in June
& beleived the finishing of the surface
to be easy. His only apprehension being the
annealing time in his large oven; Once to set
the glue & anealed again after the machining.
The all up cost shouldn't increase much more with thickness,
just diameter.
Will add that early domes used to be fabricated
from pentagonal sections but were abandoned
because stock cast acrylic sheets that the
pentagons were formed from back then weren't thick
enough to attain the depths that Stachiw was wanting to acheive.
Alan