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Acrylic project guidance

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#1

Hey all, I’m looking to cut some acrylic sheets into mason jar lids, which I will seal down with some black anodized aluminum rings I picked up. I have the Snapmaker 2.0 A350

  • So would you all recommend I cut the rings out with laser or CNC? Assume I have no other tools for cutting
  • I want to engrave a custom logo I’m getting worked on into them - I was going to use laser, good idea?

My plan is to put a home made instant hot cocoa recipe I came up with into some mason jars and put these cool lids on them, send them to some friends as gifts.

#2

Without additional info, generally acrylic will not cut well with a laser. CNC it, in my opinion.

Engraving can work, might need to coat the surface depending on the type of acrylic.

If you search on the forums or whisper @sdj544 3 times someone might have better insight than me

1 Like
#3

Think I covered close to this somewhere but there are enough new wrinkles I’ll just answer.

You didn’t say how thick or what color or what type of acrylic.
All that makes a difference.
Needs to be cast for engraving. Generally the cheap stuff at home depot is extruded.
Generally I’d say cnc but some colors actually work okay for cutting with laser but it depends on the thickness. Clear doesn’t.
I have also been able to score acrylic and then use the ‘snap’ method but I’m not sure how well that would work with circles.
As far as engraving goes, for laser it again depends on color. Clear you’ll need to use something like black sharpie or dry erase marker.

You could always paint the lids and use the laser to remove the paint:

IMG_5328
IMG_53283878×2932 2.97 MB

-S

2 Likes
#4

I bought some cheap acrylic off Amazon, so that tells me it’s likely extruded. I also went with a 90% translucent clear acrylic. I see the burn the paint trick, looks nice. I’ll browse @sdj544 post history to see if I can glean more information and narrow my questions down - thank you @brent113 also for the time you took to respond.

#5

Also, based on this, I think I should use the CNC to cut the circles if I continue to go that direction? It’s 1/8" thick acrylic

#6

With clear you don’t really have a choice.
-S

#7

If it’s extruded acrylic you’ll need to very carefully babysit the CNC while it’s cutting because (in my experience anyway) the acrylic will start to melt and build up on the bit which leads to a messy/bad cut and a broken bit. If you pause and clean the bit when the melt starts to collect you can make it work but it’s kinda of PITA. Go with the cast acrylic whenever you can.

#8

Thanks all for your advice, I decided to go the route of burning away paint on a metal lid :slight_smile: