i'm thinking of an effect for one of my windows where the whole window is cracled all over such that sidelight LEDS get defracted all over the place similar to piloux's use of a heat gun on the blackmesa mod: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=582101&postcount=543 but without the burn marks and keeping in mind that i don't have a heat gun. i've seen some innovatek acrylic reservoirs that crack when used with alcohol producds, over in the disaster mods forum, but all the pics from that are dead. does anyone know if it'd be possible for me to use rubbing alcohol over a sheet of acrylic of some sort and intentionally cause it to crackle? I don't want it to shatter, just get a nice even spiderweb effect. alternatively (i've googled to no avail) does anyone know of a place that sells acrylic sheets with a crackly finish? fortunately it's not life or death for my idea, but i think it would add an interesting effect. I think i might experiment with the rubbing alcohol idea when i get home tonight.
usplastics.com has this textured material, not exactly what you are looking for but perhaps it could work.
hrmm, maybe it'd work, but i'm looking for something that's the clear plastic equivalent of this glass christmas ornament: http://amos2.catalogcity.com/cc.amo...me&trk=sale&ccsid=230669869-20984&_ccn_test=1
i once tried to clean a plexi window with sticker remover( nailpolish remover will do the same) and it dissolved it... it wasn't that bad untill i touched it and "deleted" the nice shiney surface ... could have known that agressife chemicals would do sich things to plexi but try some household chemicals on it , and see what effects you can get by just letting it dry , moving( like bending but less extreme) while it is hardening again that will probably make some small cracks without.... find some scrap material before you try it for real... saves you the trouble redoing the window
ooh, goo gone here i come. fortunately i have a good amount of scrap acrylic from work, and i was planning on using that before spending real money on real good stuff. thanks for the tip
Superglue (or any brand, so long as it's Cyanoacrylate). You can get cheapo stuff from markets for £1 per 125ml. One drawback is that it does cloud the surface, though you should be able to clean it with something.
Maybe liquid nitrogen would create a nifty effect. As far as I know the nitrogen will cool the plastic so fast that it will crack (or break ). If you can get your hands on some liquid nitrogen then give it a try.
Heat gun and air canister... You know the "Dust off" type stuff, Heat the plexi till it's a little too hot(But not so it blisters) then spray the air canister on it upside down, you know, so it comes out liquid. Don't touch too much of it tho, it will freeze human skin on contact, and can cause frostbite. It will leave crackles in the plexi, but the surface will still be clear, neat effect with side lighting with LED's usually.
you mean something like this? discovered by an accident.. cool effect though (allthough the box was unusabele afterwards! ) this is caused bu heat and rubbing alcohol... a little tip though: don't make the cracs on the outside of the glass, as those edges can be pretty sharp... for a heatsource i used a propane torch... (i had flamepolished the edges) but i guess you could use a lighter or even a hairdrier at close range... you could try to heat a oven to max and put it in for a few minutes... (but bakingpaper (?? Pizzapaper ) under it so it doesn't melt onto something...
looks sweet... just for curiosity... i'll try that on a piece of scrap plexi... i think it would work as well without the alcohol... sounds to me as the heat did it
it's actually sudden temperature change that does it. Hot to cold will crack it every time, if you do it fast enough. The alcohol would have evaporated off very fast, and pulled the heat from the plexi too fast, and caused the cracking, you can heat the stuff up a lot, but don't let it cool too quickly, or it will crack(Unless that's the effect you were going for)
yah plufimngo got it, A rapid change in temerature from hot to cold will do it, You could even get say soak it in water near boiling, then quickly dunk it in ice water, Anything like that will do it. You hafta experiment as I've literrally seen the plexi pop and crack to shreds
well... the temp. change wasn't THAT quick... i had polished it.. and then i glued everything together... after a few hours i washed off fingerprints with alcohol ten it cracked...
heh, I musta forgot about this thread. this weekend i had a chance to play around with some plexi and posted the results here http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=634122&postcount=80 in my project log. I did try heating the plexi over the stove (boiling water) then hitting it with the can of air upside down, but it didn't work. I also tried taking a frozen-with-canned-air piece and dunking it in boiling water. no, i think the heating has something to do with helping the alcohol react with the plexi. as you can see in the above post, i was able to get one piece of plexi to crackle in rubbing alcohol, but several others that i did different things to didn't react at all. I may grab some more rubbing alcohol on the way home from work this afternoon and try gently heating the plexi then rubbing it down with alcohol. that box above is rather cool looking, though i don't think i want that much of an effect, as i'd worry about chunks of the window falling out. oh, and i'm rather familliar with cracked plexi being really $%^@$%^ sharp, as the 3 cuts on my index fingers and thumb will tell you. thanks for the tips guys, i'm still working on this one (though i might go for the smoked bubbly look, though it's harder to keep the pieces of plexi flat when doing this) and will definitely post or at least crosspost my results.
and petrol works quite nicely... if you have rough edges and it gets all over the plate it starts cracking from the edges inward... i used some sticker remover and the effect is nice as well. you can see where the stuff "walked"( give me the correct word) and the trail it left without really damaging the shineyness as long as you don't touch that... it's outside hardening at the moment so i cant really tell what it turns out to be yet. the hotcold i tried wasn't that extreme, cleaning vinegar didn't do a thing... water and cleaning alcohol neither might try the very hot/ice cold water tomorrow
hrmm, i tried goo gone (sticker remover, contains petrolium distillates) maybe i just didn't leave it on long enough... testing in progress.... (i'll try lighter fluid too, i have a bit of that for my zippo)
idea: dab a paper towel w/ pvc pipe cleaner then wipe the plexi. EDIT: that may result in more of a foggy plexi, not cracked, havent tried it
i was thinking maybe cover your plexi with a clear sheet of vinal, or type of clear sticker thats large enough to cover you window and then just hit it with a hammer the pieces would be held in place buy the clear sticker aned you would never know?
i don't know if i want that extreme of an effect, but it's another idea to try egads typing sucks with a paper towel taped to your thumb. broken plexi is sharp kids, be careful.
why does everybody warn other people about this stuff, now i can't blame you when i cut myself but hammering ? you'll damage your plexi with that
