Basic Acrylic model making for Designers, Architects & Makers

Do you think it's okay to glue your  acrylic together with super glue   do you think it's acceptable to use tape  to put acrylic together do you think it's   okay to glue your acrylic together with hot  glue then this video is not for you my name   is Eric Strebel i'm an industrial designer welcome  to my channel about product design and making   some good basic tools for working with  acrylic are a nice good steel ruler   an acrylic scoring blade some solvent stepper  bits work really good for drilling holes a   file some sandpaper and then a good way to  dispense the solvent you can use a brush   but i like to use something with a needle like  this lure lock bottle link below here's a sheet   of blue extruded acrylic it has a slightly lower  melting temperature than the cast acrylic but   perfectly suitable for any model building project  cast acrylic usually has a paper backing on it   that's how you can tell the difference it has a  higher melting temperature and is usually a little   bit harder than the extruded acrylic it comes  in many colors including translucent transparent   like the clear and of course many colors like this  sheet of black it comes in rods and tubes as well   in many different sizes for whatever your needs  are this video assumes that you don't have   access to a laser cutter i'm going to build  three different cubes using three different   methods using various equipment and machinery  from basic to intermediate skill level alright to attempt any sort of model building  project you need some sort of a plan so just   like in many of my other videos we're going  to draw out a plan we're going to make a 2   inch cube this is equal to 50.8 millimeters  you also need to know the thickness of your   material and in this case we're going  to use 2.4 millimeter thick material   we're going to put end caps on our cube it's  going to have basically a top and a bottom   we're going to have overlapping  sides so you'll see two of them here   overlapping means that the height will be slightly  different than the width on the sides of the cube   so let's calculate the height of  the side pieces that we're going to   make we can calculate that by taking the 50.8  minus 2.4 minus 2.4 this gives us 46 millimeters   in height so next we need to figure out the width  of the sides we can figure this out by taking 50.8   minus 2.4 this gives us 48.4 on the width of each  of the sides now for the end caps those should be   square so they should be 50.8 by 50.8 let's  build the first two cubes using this method   all right the first cube we're gonna build we're  gonna use building a bandsaw and you would think   that this is maybe the easiest or the best way  to cut some acrylic to build a cube let's try   the first issue you're going to run into is  saw marks and these sound marks come from the   bandsaw itself so i file and sand the edges  of all the pieces of acrylic to get them out   next let's cut the four sides i've cut a few  extra and i pick out the four that are the closest   in size clamp them together and start  filing out those saw marks as well try   to get them all uniform now let's  cut the top and the bottom parts   now that we have the two end caps cut let's drill  a hole i'm going to use a regular drill bit notice   how i have a piece of wood underneath my piece  of acrylic this is important so you don't get   chip out at the back side nice and slow easy does  it get you a really nice hole with a stepper bit next i'll bandsaw off a little piece of acrylic  rod and that's what we will adhere on to the end   of the cube let's talk about solvents i'm using  weldon's water clear fast set dichloromethane   i'm taking it out of the main container with a  syringe and i'm putting it into this lure lock   application bottle this is what i'm going to  use to adhere one piece of acrylic to another   let's do a little flood weld so i'm just  flooding the area and placing the other   piece of acrylic right on top of that and that  melts the acrylic so when i'm using this needle   here to place little drops of fluid onto the  acrylic it's softening and melting the acrylic   on a molecular level and this allows the acrylic  to then bond to another piece of acrylic it makes   a very strong bond after about 12 to 24 hours i'm  sanding the cube flat so i can put the end caps on   notice i'm using a 30 gauge needle here in this  lure lock bottle applicator it's very fine because   the solvent is very very thin and this allows  me to place just a little bit of solvent exactly   where i need the solvent to be to start softening  the acrylic so i can bond the two pieces together let's add a weight on the top just  to help and now let's glue in the 3 8   clear rod into the hole that we've drilled  and place just a tiny bit of solvent along   the bottom edge and connect those the solvent  will evaporate eventually and it'll create an   excellent bond we'll peel away the paper and  our cube will be finished the parts for this   cube were cut with a band saw which means you  have some marks that you have to remove somehow   so not my first choice for building models with  acrylic let's take a look at some other options   let's build the second cube with an acrylic  scoring blade you can buy these at your local   big box retailer for less than ten dollars this  blade has a hook on it that will score a v-groove   in your plastic and you can drag that against  a ruler to create your brake line you'll do   this several times to create a nice groove in your  acrylic you can then take your acrylic and snap it   you want to grab onto the fatter piece of acrylic  so you get better leverage to break it let's clamp   that piece of acrylic along that score line on the  edge of the table and that's it i'm gonna use an   x-acto knife to cut through the plastic that's  on the outside and you get a pretty clean break   the nice thing about this method is you don't  have to come back and clean up any saw marks   like you do on the bandsaw and you don't  have acrylic chips flying all over the place   you'll notice i've cut quite a few strips and  now i'm cutting perpendicular to that strip to   make my little side pieces and of course i'm  gonna make extra ones so that i can choose the   four that are the closest in size to make it  a little bit easier for me to make my cube   so the snap and square method gives you  a pretty clean cut a very clean break   and you don't have to go back and clean up  those edges like you do with the band saw   you use the same solvent as we did to make  the first cube this is a 14 gauge needle much   too fat of a needle to dispense the liquid here  so let's put the 30 gauge needle back onto the   dispenser and try that again all right you see  how that solvent wicks underneath the piece of   acrylic that's what you want once the initial  flood of solvent has evaporated you can come back   and add a little bit more just to soften up the  plastic and create a little bit of a stronger bond   i'm going to go ahead and cement the rest of  the corners of this clear snap and score cube   together using the same method again flooding  underneath just those overlapping joints   use some 180 grit sandpaper to sand my cube flat to blow off that dust i'm applying  a solvent on the edges of my top   piece and placing my cube down on there  and you can see the solvent being wicked   underneath there whether you do it from the  top or the bottom the result is the same this is a little bit of an easier cube to build  accuracy is probably not quite as high as the   band saw but an easy clean way to work and build  models with acrylic the third way i'm going to   build a cube is to use a table saw and this will  give us a higher degree of dimensional accuracy   than the other two methods we've used so far i'm  using a cross-cut 60-tooth cut-off blade here   they do make special plastic blades and mine says  for plastic on the side basically the blade has   a lot more teeth so that you don't get as much  tear out when the saw cuts through the plastic   you'll see that i've attached a board to my fence  and this allows me better control and to get my   fingers in there to hold the smaller pieces of  plastic than it would against the taller fence   you'll see here these pieces are all dimensionally  identical because they were cut on the saw   all the square faces are 50.8 millimeters  so they are perfectly square we're gonna   use a router with a 45 degree bit to bevel each  one of the four edges on each of the surfaces   so the router does a really nice job of beveling  those edges there's no tear out this gives us   a really nice surface to use our solvent on to  adhere the parts to each other and it's just a   matter of going through and gluing all the beveled  edges together to build a cube i'm using the same   solvent here that i use for the other cubes you  could use the thickened acrylic cement here if you   wanted and apply it with a brush i just prefer  to use the solvent thinner cement to build   my acrylic models with building a cube with a  table saw and a router and then beveling the   edges is going to give you the highest degree  of accuracy the cleanest best looking cube that   you can build now not everybody's going to  have a table saw to build a cube like this   so you may end up using one of the other  methods but i want to cover all the   different options if you're just starting  out and building basic models with acrylic   each of the methods have their own advantages and  disadvantages in the next video advanced basics   will cover using heat to heat bend drape form  and flame polish our acrylics stay tuned for that   make sure you give the video a thumbs up and don't  forget to subscribe if you haven't already done so   make sure to hit the bell so you get  notifications every time i have a new video   also don't forget to follow me  on social media i'm on facebook   instagram 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Channel: Eric Strebel

Views: 84,440

Keywords: Industrial Design, Product design, Consumer product development, Eric Strebel, consumer products, design and making, product development, marker renering, model making, prototyping, acrylic model making, acrylic solvent, solvent welding, cutting acrylic, glueing acrylic, bonding acrylic, acrylic sheet, architectural model building

Id: Se2-zhutPn4

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 14 2021