| 4mm Clear Cast and Extruded Acrylic Sheet Sales in the UK | |||
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4mm Cast and Extruded Acrylic Sheet:
Our 4mm Acrylic sheet is available in two types Extruded or Cast.
- 4mm Extruded Clear Acrylic Sheets (Click Link For Sizes and Prices)
- 4mm Cast Clear Acrylic Sheets (Click Link For Sizes and Prices)
Description of Extruded Acrylic Sheet:
Extruded sheet is processed by a machine that pushes a liquified acrylic monomer through a series of rollers. These rollers are designed to flatten and cool the sheets as they run through the extrusion equipment.
This process is the most cost effective form of manufacturing acrylic sheet and probably accounts for about 80% of all the acrylic sheet on the market.
Description of Cast Acrylic Sheet:
Cast Acrylic is made by pouring a liquid acrylic monomer between two sheets of highly polished glass sealed with a rubber gasket. This unit includes heat activated hardeners, or catalysts, and as the unit is heated, through a series of water baths, produce a single sheet of solid acrylic.
What is the Strength Difference?:
Cast Acrylic sheet is processed with very little stress involved. This results in a stronger sheet material due to the higher molecular structure of the sheet.
Casting the sheet is a more time consuming and more expensive process. This process is mainly used to manufacture thicker sheets and / or when the sheet material is going to be used in an application where strength is an issue, such as aircraft canopies, aquariums, water tanks etc, or where the sheet material needs to be fabricated using machines. Basically cast sheet is harder than extruded sheet.
If you attempt to machine extruded acrylic the heat created from the machining tends to release any stress put in the material at manufacturing stage when the force of the rollers compacted the material to make it thinner.
You will not have this problem with cast acrylic since there was no stress introduced during the manufacturing process. However, one of the benefits of extruded sheet over cast sheet is that greater thickness tolerances can be achieved during the extrusion process than can be achieved in the casting process.
- 4mm Extruded Clear Acrylic Sheets (Click Link For Sizes and Prices)
- 4mm Cast Clear Acrylic Sheets (Click Link For Sizes and Prices)
