Acrylic bending fixture or jig?

[Kevin Schlossberg]

Hey guys! I'm getting ready to make a bunch of acrylic knife display holders using my laser and am having a hard time finding a decent plastic bending fixture.

Techshop seems to have these in their physical workshops


But I can't find who makes them and my google fu is weak. I've searched for plastic bending jigs, plastic bending fixtures and more and just can't seem to track something like this down. I've found one by Shannon (http://www.shannon.nl/eng/bending-accessories) but that thing is $1000 and I don't need anything that large.

Anyone have an idea where I can purchase something like this?

[Scott Shepherd]

Looks to me like someone took two metal shelves and then cut the end pieces on a laser (metal or plastic, I can't tell from the photo). A couple of screws and two knobs and you're done. I've never seen a commercial bender that looks like that.

[Kevin Schlossberg]

Turns out it is made by a company called Formech and is part of their heat bending setup

They sell them separately but they are 170. I may laser cut some protractors and try to rig up something like this myself, if I can figure out how

[Scott Shepherd]

Turns out it is made by a company called Formech and is part of their heat bending setup

They sell them separately but they are 170. I may laser cut some protractors and try to rig up something like this myself, if I can figure out how

I made ours out of MDF. It doesn't need to be much. I'm sure you can come up with something easy and cheaper than $170.

[Kevin Schlossberg]

Yeah if I had actual mechanical skill I would do just that

[Joe Pelonio]

I don't know what shape you need to bend it in, but I will simply use clamps to hold it down on my 2" thick table over the heat strip, and bend it over the table edge to get a "soft" 45 degree bend.

[Kevin Schlossberg]

I'm going to be making displays similar to this -http://www.palaydisplay.com/Knife-Display-6-Feature-p-23540.html

The first two I bent around a scrap 2x4 and they didn't wind up straight.

[Mike Null]

It might be easier to cut the sides flat then glue up supports on the ends.

[Kevin Schlossberg]

Yeah avoiding gluing was was part of the idea behind bending these; otherwise I'd boxjoint shapes together to make a display.

I may just laser a mdf form to bend these over