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Re: acrylic; motors
[Jon Hylands said, of oil-filled motors:]
>I think it's rather pointless to do something like that for the depths you
>are talking about.
Oh, I was just interested as a matter of general, um, interest. I'm not using any motor at all at the depths I'm talking about, yet. I just wondered how it worked.
Thanks Paul, Nathaniel, and whoever else I might not be remembering, for the useful info on bending acrylic. Of course, I read it after I actually tried it, so I experimented with the temperature, and I didn't think about the flammable gasses. Don't worry, it turned out fine. The doctors say the scars will... no, really, nothing happened.
I now have a lovely molded acrylic viewport on a plastic 55-gallon white citrus-fresh Mountain Dew Flavoring drum. It fit so snugly that I dispensed altogether with drilling holes and bolting it, and just gobbed it on with clear silicone. I left plenty of overlap of the square plastic over the round hole, so it's really glued on there good.
This is really fun, and everyone should do it -- even if they don't have a reason to need any bent clear plastic. Our kitchen is now littered with various-shaped test pieces. You can stick it back in the oven and re-do it if it doesn't turn out the way you want. Wrap it around a bottle or glass, and make a pencil holder. Use something bigger, and you can stack up fruit inside it. Fun for the whole family.
I just used our regular gas oven. There's a little smell, but melting mess (as mentioned in the "white paper" on the website) isn't a problem at this temperature. Wear gloves, because things that come out of the oven are HOT. Ouch. The piece I used was small enough, because my window-hole is only about ten inches in diameter, that I didn't have any problem fitting it on the rack of our tiny oven. If it was bigger, I could have taken out the racks and stood it vertically.
I have no idea how inaccurate our oven is, but I started at 180°F and it got a little bendy but not very cooperative, so I moved it up bit by bit and ended up with it a bit over 200. That was enough for it to sag inside the oven, but still have a little resistance and bend slow. I imagine at higher temperatures you could fling it at the wall and it would crumple into abstract art, or you could mold it onto more complicated shapes and wrap it around tighter curves.
The guy at the hardware store says it works for PVC pipe, too, but I haven't tried that yet. The possibilities are mind-boggling. I think they would be, anyway, if I could think of any of them.
---------
David
buchner@wcta.net
http://customer.wcta.net/buchner
Osage MN USA