Pete Thomas(UK)
11-20-2008, 6:46 PM
Hi all. I have liiked through the past posts to see if I could find an answer to my problem. No luck.
I bought some 3mm mirror acrylic a couple of months ago. Today I wanted to cut out some animal shapes for a local primary school fair. Problem no one was that the acrylic was not flat. It had cupped, bent in both directions. I tried heating it gently with a hot air gun and applied a bit of pressure to straighten it out, it did help a bit. When I had vector cut the acrylic two months ago the back surface was getting marked with smoke damage. I thought that putting transfer paper on the back would help. Disaster, when I peeled the paper off it took the plain mirror backing off as well. This was in the area that I had warmed with the hot air gun. Not a good idea.
I started to vector cut the acrylic and then noticed that the reflective surface was blooming, losing its reflectivness away from the cut edge for about 3/8".
Is this caused by moisture? Does acrylic absorb moisture slowly. I still have most of an 8 x4 sheet that at the moment I cant use. Any suggestions what I could do?
I bought some 3mm mirror acrylic a couple of months ago. Today I wanted to cut out some animal shapes for a local primary school fair. Problem no one was that the acrylic was not flat. It had cupped, bent in both directions. I tried heating it gently with a hot air gun and applied a bit of pressure to straighten it out, it did help a bit. When I had vector cut the acrylic two months ago the back surface was getting marked with smoke damage. I thought that putting transfer paper on the back would help. Disaster, when I peeled the paper off it took the plain mirror backing off as well. This was in the area that I had warmed with the hot air gun. Not a good idea.
I started to vector cut the acrylic and then noticed that the reflective surface was blooming, losing its reflectivness away from the cut edge for about 3/8".
Is this caused by moisture? Does acrylic absorb moisture slowly. I still have most of an 8 x4 sheet that at the moment I cant use. Any suggestions what I could do?