Can you anneal a laser polished edge of acrylic with heat gun?

[John Blazy]

I have read that in order to eliminate potential crazing / micro cracking on edges of flame or laser polished acrylic that occurs with alcohol wipe and some solvent based adhesives, you need to anneal the panel, which is time consuming, not to mention energy consuming (like 2 hrs @ 200F +/-).

I would like to anneal with a heat gun, and tried a pc today - heated half the stick so I could see a comparison. Then I wiped the whole thing with alcohol, which always crazes the edge, and now none of it crazes. Some twisted version of Murphy's Law - When you dont want it to craze, even breathing on acrylic with alcohol breath will craze it and ruin your pc (higher probability proportionate to how pricey the pc is), but now on the test pc, it doesnt craze at all - even on the end that I didnt hit with the heat gun.

Then I have another issue. I need to bond acrylic to an area that I filled in with 2 part reactive cement - Acrifix Versatile - similar to Weld-On 42. Whenever I bond with more of itself onto the hardened cement, it cracks as well, so I need to experiment with annealing the cured cement. Again, I would like to locally anneal it with a heat gun rather than stick it in my oven for 2 hrs.

Anyone have experience with these issues?

[Gary Hair]

My first thought is that it won't work because what you are trying to accomplish is the reduction of surface tension. I don't think the heat gun will do that over a large enough area to be effective. This is just my un-educated guess and worth every penny you paid for it...