I got my artwork on December 3rd, (I have no pics today, just a description on what I did). However, the SF2 marquee is really dark. Too much black and barely any pink and purple. Hopefully it looks good when I put light behind it. It's great to finally have the CPO, but unfortunately I am still unprepared for it. I don't have the plexi done and I need the bare CP to help drill the holes for the plexiglass. I rushed out to the store last night and bought a sheet of 18x32 acrylic for around $17 dollars. It's enough for me to experiment with and mess up a few times.
I had some Xacto blades lying around that I've lost, so I had to make do with a razorblade holder/box opener. It bent on the first swipe and made a bad crooked line that strayed off of my straightedge onto the good material. First mistake was to use a cheap razorblade. Second mistake was to go too quickly with my cut. Third mistake was to use a 3/4" piece of MDF as my straigtedge (too tall). Fourth mistake was to press the straightedge into the scrap material instead of holding it down over the finish material. Fifth mistake was to rush things.
Eventually I used an Xacto knife with an old blade to score the plexi. I made many, many slow cuts as deep as I could on the top edge of the plexi. After scoring, I took it to the coffee table and pushed down quickly and it snapped loudly. Unfortunately the snap followed the line of one of the mis-cuts and I had a crooked edge. The other cuts weren't much better. It seems that if you don't score deep enough, the crack strays from the line at the edges. You really have to score pretty deeply when doing short cuts to get the crack to follow the straight line.
To correct the bad cuts, I used a dremel tool with a cutoff disk. At too low a speed, it melts the plastic too much. It stinks. Also, human hands can't cut straight enough while holding one of these things. The cut looks wobbly and I ended up with a lot of melted bits clinging to the dege. I used a file to knock it down and a sanding drum to smooth things out. The sanding drum works very well, but it's too easy to take off too much material and increase the uneven look of the cut.
Drilling holes, I made some observations. Making small drill holes, there's no problem whatsoever. Go nuts. Using a big, sharp drill bit will tend to crack the plexi when digging in for the first time. Going fast helps, but the torque always cracks the plexi when it catches. What I did was drill all the holes, even the button holes with a small bit. My kit has these useless drill bits with a point at the end that aren't any good for drilling much of anything. But on plexi eventually the dig in and make the hole. When I had that as a pilot hole, I got out the hole saw. What I noticed about using the hole saw was that the drill bit in the center of this thing is big, like 5/8". When this monster digs into the small pilot hole, it cracks the plexi every time. It's not much of a problem with button holes because the hole saw part will cut out the cracked area. After the center bit gets through, the holesaw teeth dig in. If you hit with the teeth at full speed, you have the chance at another crack, but usually it won't. Start your cutting, but slow down when it's just about to punch through. If you're going too fast when it punches through, you'll get another crack.
After I had all the holes done, I went around to all the bolt holes and made them square with a drywall cutting tool on my dremel. It works very well eating away at the plexi. Great choice to square off the bolt holes.
I ended up with a good piece with crooked edges and about 4 cracks. I'll obviously have to do it again. Here's the process I'll use when doing this on the next piece of material:
- Use a heavy duty razor knife and take plenty of time to score deeply
- Use a flat straightedge and cut slowly and deeply with short strokes
- Make sure your straight edge is on the finished side to help protect it
- Take your time, your only chance on a straight cut is on the first snap
- When it comes time to snap, use a good flat, sharp surface and snap hard and fast
- When doing holes use a small drill bit
- When doing button holes widen the small hole with a drywall cutter bit on your dremel or slightly bigger drill bits so that your hole saw drill bit doesn't have to punch through
- When using the hole saw, slow down before it punches through.
No comments:
Post a Comment