How to created counter display ?!---Processes for producing acrylic products
The manufacture of excellent acrylic products is affected by various factors, such as raw material selection, processes, even packaging, which can affect the quality of acrylic products badly. From material selection to packaging and transportation, we explain in detail how to manufacture an outstanding acrylic product.
Material selection
High-quality acrylic materials directly determine the quality of acrylic products. If the choice of inferior acrylic materials, acrylic products are mostly defective products. An inferior quality acrylic plate refers to acrylic sheet made of recycled material as a raw material. The following are a few ways to judge the quality of acrylic sheet.
1. Appearance of acrylic
According to the characteristics of acrylic material, if there is fading, low gloss, small pores at the surface, touch like lime that the quality of acrylic is not good. In addition to observing the appearance, you can also see whether the acrylic specification is consistent with the actual situation of the acrylic material. If not, you can also judge that the acrylic material is irregular.
2. Burn
The combustion test can be carried out with small pieces of acrylic if it can burn quickly to show that the quality of acrylic is not good.
3. Transmittance
The acrylic sheet has a very high light transmittance. Using the characteristic of acrylic transmission light will not absorb light color if the white light yellowing or blue color difference after through the acrylic board that indicates the acrylic quality is not good.
4. Melt pasting method
Good acrylic material and poor acrylic material become different after melting. For example, poor quality acrylic materials after a hot melt will become difficult to separate but the good one can be easily separated.
5. Surface protection film
The soft rubber edge packaging of the good acrylic material is very intact. The soft rubber edge of the defective acrylic plate looks very miscellaneous and impure, and the quality of the protective film of the defective acrylic is also poor.
6. Performance during cutting
If the acrylic sheet produces a pungent odor when cut. Fracture/cut surface is not smooth enough is also judged as inferior acrylic.
Processing
A series of processes include Panel Cutting, Polish, Surface Effect, Hot Bending, Drilling, Packaging, and Transportation.
Panel Cutting
1. CNC electric reciprocating panel saw
The specification of the whole acrylic board is generally 2.05*3.05m. Firstly, we need to cut a large piece of acrylic sheet into a lot of small ones. It is common to use the electric reciprocating cutting board saw, which adopts automatic computer control. Human-computer integration operation, input the data, and then the machine automatically runs to precisely cut the sheet to be processed. A thickness of a few pieces acrylic plate can put into the machine saw into small plates according to the size to improve the production efficiency.
2. Table saw
Strictly speaking, table saws are used for carpentry, but sometimes factories also use this convenient machine to process acrylic. Cutting tools and tool speed selection is different from cutting wood. Table saw flexible and convenient operation, suitable for cutting small pieces of acrylic thick board.
3. Laser cutting
Laser cutting is the most common cutting method for acrylic. Laser processing accuracy is up to millimeters, using software laser cutting machine control, unlimited cutting graphics. Acrylic laser generally cutting low-speed smooth incision. The laser transmitter power is low, different thicknesses of the acrylic sheet cut with the different laser power. 15 mm or more thick acrylic sheets are preferably cut with high power lasers.
Polish
The edge of the acrylic plate is not smooth enough after cutting, and the knife marks or burrs that need to be polished. According to the characteristics of the product and section requirements, different polishing methods can be selected. The polishing methods in the factory are generally flame polishing, cloth wheel polishing, and diamond polishing.
1. Flame polishing
Spray gun using alcohol as fuel, burn the rough surface. But the efficiency of this polish is poor. Suitable for products such as low requirements for the edge of the acrylic board, hanging in high light boxes. And sometimes small gaps or irregular cross sections are also polished by flame. The processing costs of acrylic processing plants are not too much. The advantage is that it is fast and saves time.
2. Cloth wheel polishing
Cloth wheel polishing is to use special polishing wax on the cloth wheel of the polishing machine，then put the acrylic surface under the cloth wheel to polish until the surface is smooth and transparent. The effect of the cloth wheel polishing is better than flame polishing. it can be used for curved surface polishing and sometimes combined with diamond polishing to achieve a better effect. The disadvantage is that it needs to be operated manually and takes a lot of time.
3. Diamond edge polisher
Diamond edge polisher is a professional grade semi-automatic polishing equipment. After ultra-precision polish tools, it can achieve the smooth effect of the mirror surface. The operations are simple and fast, and the efficiency is good. It is suitable for products with high polishing requirements, but it cannot polish the curved surface. Polishing cannot exceed the length of the machine, and diamond edge polisher machine is expensive.
Surface effect
Acrylic products in the advertising industry especially need to do a variety of surface effects, acrylic performance is plasticity and good color effect.
1. Screen printing
The screen printing plate is made by the photographic plate making with a photosensitive material. When printing, through the extrusion of the scraper, the ink is transferred to acrylic through the mesh of the picture and text part, forming the same picture and text as the original. Screen printing equipment is simple, easy to operate, plate-making simple and low cost, strong adaptability. However, screen printing cannot achieve the effect of full-color printing on the acrylic surface.
2. Hot stamping
Hot stamping is the use of the hot press method to print the hot stamping on acrylic products. The bronzing film and polyester film are stripped and bonded to acrylic products after bonding hot pressing, forming a kind of rich and luxurious special effect on acrylic. The way of hot stamping is not only the high cost but also high thickness of the pattern that the pattern printed on acrylic is not clear enough.
3. Acrylic UV print
UV flat inkjet printer can paint on a variety of material surfaces, without the need for a mask or screen, only a single step can be sprayed on acrylic to print the required patterns, reducing manufacturing time and cost. Wipe a layer of the coating before printing, enhance the adhesion of UV printing pattern, wipe the printed pattern of acrylic plastic coating, the color is gorgeous, the effect is lifelike, and the adhesion is strong and wear-resistant.
4. Laser engraving
Laser engraving uses the light energy to cause the surface material to change traces, or burn some of the material to “engraved” traces, showing the required etching of graphics and text. The frosting effect of laser on the acrylic surface is very white, which is in sharp contrast to the original transparent texture.
5.Mounting prints
Mounting prints behind acrylic is a common method nowadays. It uses a desktop laminator to press the image to double-sided optical clear mounting film, then uses desktop laminator again to press the image with the double-sided optical clear mounting film on the acrylic sheet.
This process should pay attention to reduce the dust on the material and avoid the appearance of bubbles after installation.
This is the first article of processes for producing acrylic products. Click here to read the second article for more details.
Acrylic display we offer add eye-catching elements to the product display to promote sales, and contact us to see what else we can do?