The CNC acrylic cutting machine has gradually replaced the traditional electronic cutting tools for acrylic engraving and cutting. As a cheap, beautiful, and durable material, acrylic products can be seen everywhere in life. For cutting a small acrylic board, you can use a hook knife or other manual tools. Although it is convenient, the cutting accuracy is poor and the speed is slow. However, in case of batch processing or complex patterns engraving, the best choice is to use a CNC acrylic cutting machine.

Acrylic material

Speaking of acrylic, or PMMA, or organic glass, people may be quite familiar with it. It is deeply favored by the advertising industry because of its good transparency and workability. For example, acrylic advertising signs, boards, letters, logos, nameplates, etc. Besides, acrylic also has wide applications in craft, building, decoration, and other fields.  

Characteristics of acrylic include high transparency, high-temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, long service life, high workability, etc.

In terms of the production process, the acrylic falls into cast acrylic and extruded acrylic.

Cast acrylic has outstanding rigidity, strength, and chemical resistance. So it is suitable to make large-sized signs and boards. Besides, cast acrylic has incomparable flexibility in terms of color and surface texture effect.

Extruded acrylic has weaker mechanical properties and higher flexibility than cast acrylic. However, this makes it convenient for bending and thermal forming processing with less softening time.

What machines can be used to cut acrylic?

The average thickness of acrylic boards is around 3-20mm. The traditional cutting method has a long production cycle, complex processes, and low precision. And the cutting results are barely satisfactory.

However, the appearance of the CNC cutting machine solves all the above questions perfectly. Currently, the most common acrylic CNC cutting machines include the CNC router and the acrylic laser cutter.

For processing approaches, both machines can cut and engrave acrylic boards.

Engraving: Generally, the acrylic engraving is conducted on the back of the acrylic board. Of course, you can also engrave the top surface. Remember to mirror the patterns before carrying out the back-side acrylic engraving. Besides, the acrylic engraving process requires fast speed but low power. Because a high power may cause uneven stripes on the product surface. You may need to do some tests before getting the best acrylic engraving results.

Cutting: Cutting acrylic is more simple than acrylic engraving. CNC router acrylic cutting machine requires dedicated CNC bits for acrylic cutting and engraving. The cutting edges are smooth and clean without blurs. Besides, the acrylic laser cutting machine uses air blowing device to improve the cutting quality.

How to choose an acrylic cutting machine

The application of laser cutting technology has ushered in new developments in acrylic material processing. The laser cutting machine adopts non-contact processing, which can minimize the deformation of acrylic. Due to the high precision of laser processing, there are no cracks in the cutting seam, and generally, no post-processing is required. In addition, laser processing can also produce patterns and shapes that traditional methods cannot produce. Therefore, laser cutting has gradually become the most common processing method for acrylic CNC cutting.

However, the CNC router acrylic cutting machine still plays an important role in acrylic CNC cutting. Because it can not only process acrylic sheets but also cut wooden boards in a large amount. So a lot of wood and acrylic manufacturers would choose the CNC router machine.

Hence, the answers to how to choose an acrylic CNC machine are not complicated. It mainly depends on your processing demands. A CO2 laser cutter melts the acrylic by non-contacting method, while a CNC router machine cuts through acrylic with a CNC bit.

If your business is to cut and engrave various acrylic products, an acrylic laser cutter can be a good choice. The laser acrylic cutting machine occupies a small area and produces high-quality and high-precision laser cut acrylic products.

But, in the event that you cut wooden boards a lot besides acrylic boards, please consider a CNC router machine. The CNC router is professional in cutting and engraving wooden boards for various furniture, like doors, cabinets, wardrobes, etc. 

Released by Jinan APEX Machinery Equipment Co., Ltd.