Anyone work with THICK plexi (I want to make a cab)

[pinballwizard79]

Alright, I am tired of looking for a widebody WMS pinball cabinet for my 46" LCD pinball project. All I need is this damn cabinet & until I get one everything is @ a standstill.

So I think of making a LCD & PC based pinball machine in a clear plexi cabinet.

At least artwork wont be an issue  

Anyone have experience with plexi building?

[billpa]

I used to build fish tanks out of plexi.  It is not too hard to work with once you get the hang of it. Cuts need to be nice and straight and you will need to sand and polish them down a bit before you glue them.  Weld On is what you want to use...there are various grades (denoted by a number).  Some glues are more viscous than others.  Of course you don't have to worry about holding water for an aquarium   Thick plexi is pretty darn expensive though. Honestly I would just go with wood.  If you are building a full size cab, you are going to have a lot of empty space in there...which kind of defeats the purpose of having the cab clear. I would want to see all the guts of a real cab like the photo you attached.

[pinballwizard79]

thanks billpa, good info there for me to consider

[Franco B]

I love working with acrylic and I'm trying to find more and more things to do with it 

As billpa said it can get expensive with the thicker pieces.

It can be shaped and formed fairly easily but it can get a little tricky with the thicker gauges depending on the tooling you have. I have managed to work with acrylic up to 1" with just a jigsaw and a router though.

Weld-on #4 is commonly used in the US to bond extruded acrylic pieces together and I managed to find a similar solvent here in the UK called Extru-Fix.

This is a good video which shows Weld-on being used:

[shateredsoul]

  Some glues are more viscous than others.  Of course you don't have to worry about holding water for an aquarium  

or you can have the first fishtank pinball! think about it! You can have a seperate compartment for the pc ...

[milkit]

  Some glues are more viscous than others.  Of course you don't have to worry about holding water for an aquarium  

or you can have the first fishtank pinball! think about it! You can have a seperate compartment for the pc ...

aka water cooled system

would be a pita to maintain though and just asking for trouble

[massive88]

Ive been itching to make an xbox controller box just out of plexi, but Im worried it would end up looking like ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---.

I also cant decide if I want to go clear or opaque black or smoked.  Im really just worried about the edges, Id want to round them out with the router, but im not sure I could get it to look good.  I guess I could test it out on some spare plexi that I have lying around.

What do you use to polish them?  I was thinking a felt attachment for my dremel might do the job, but I dont know...

[Franco B]

You can round the edges nicely with a round over bit the same you do MDF etc.

I generally use a cheap 3.2mm roundover bit for 3mm acrylic.

It polishes up very easily to a high gloss shine too.

I start with 320 grit emery/wet n dry and polish it until the machining marks are removed. You can then go up the grades one by one to get it nice and smooth. I tend to go 320>600>800>1200.

Once you are there the edge should look translucent and you can then apply Novus 3 with a cloth followed by Novus 2. You should be left with a crystal clear (for clear acrylic) high gloss finish.

I did this dreamcast CP top for a customer a couple of weeks ago, you can just about see that the edge has a polished, radiused edge:

[EwJ]

It polishes up very easily to a high gloss shine too.

I start with 320 grit emery/wet n dry and polish it until the machining marks are removed. You can then go up the grades one by one to get it nice and smooth. I tend to go 320>600>800>1200.

Once you are there the edge should look translucent and you can then apply Novus 3 with a cloth followed by Novus 2. You should be left with a crystal clear (for clear acrylic) high gloss finish.

Or, if you're lazy like me, use 320 to remove marks, do a quick clean up with 400 or 600, then a couple quick passes with a propane torch.