chandelier perspex

I wanted to change the design of my perspex as i felt it was not intricate enough or did it really tie in with the product. I decided to change the design to a chandelier to play on the word "light" and found a royalty free beautiful vector online. It provided me with the detail and beauty i wanted and cost a fair bit. So I'll show you the process of making my perspex.

Firstly lets start with the file. drew it up in illustrator with space for switch, battery and screws. one piece has holes slightly smaller to tap for the screws.


after going down to the laser cutter several times and realising that something was the worn size or even worse getting it sent away and paying for it to be the wrong size, i had learnt my lesson and tested over and over to make sure the files were right and everything would fit together. I did this the quick and easy way - print it out.



the laser cutter in uni took 4 cuts at speed 10% and power 100% to cut through the perspex. this took about 15 mins a set then the raster which took about 2 mins at power 80% speed 30% and then the sink for the screws roughly a min at the same speed as the raster but 4 times again.




the perspex pieces before they are glued.



I taped the holes at this point to use M1.6 screws. I had tapped 9 holes and had 1 more hole to tap and the tap broke - great!! so had1 screw short in one of the pieces. I later found out that my taps hadn't worked so ended up having to get the pieces all re-cut and tapped but i got this done by SJS laser cutting as by this point trying to get on the uni laser cutter was practically impossible.

then the perspex needs to be glued and clamped. two back pieces together and two front pieces. It is easy to get the back pieces in line as i just put a screw through them and tightened with a bolt. the front two a little trickier. I had to glue two off cuts of perspex together lined up to use a as a holder and clamp. the black perspex can be glues using many glues. I ended up using liquid cement but you can use chloroform but this interfered with my threads as chloroform melts the plastic together. Mirrored perspex however is very hard to glue as the perspex itself is clear and it is a coating on the back which makes it mirrored. this coating comes off with both chloroform and liquid cement and is also very fragile. I had to coat with silver leaf before gluing with epoxy resin to make sure it would stay mirrored.



Perspex is so easily scratched you have to keep going until it is almost perfect. you sand away a few mm so i accounted for that in my laser cutting file. you can use brasso to shine it up and T-cut to remove most of the scratches. you have to start with a coarse sand paper and files to get the shape and work your way up using finer and finer grit. IT TAKES AN AGE!!! to get a shine finish took it down to the jewellery workshop and buffed it on a special machine.

So that's how its made. It took me so many attempts to get it right and there are so many problems with perspex . I'm still not 100% happy with my perspex, I had to get the mirrored one sandblasted at the edges and there are still lines in the black but I'm out of time and it doesn't look too bad.