Lots of good progress since I've been MIA.
It's funny how much work we get done when the boss is out of town.
So you say you have to drill the tank? Are you sure it's not tempered glass?
It's funny how that works, when my wife is here, I find lazy ways to pass the time, but when she's gone, i'm motivated to do work. hmm, psychologist would have a field day with that.
As for the glass being tempered, I'm pretty confident that it's not, it's rare to see 1/2" glass be tempered.... I'll know for sure when I start drilling....
Awsome work on the sump and other acrylic! Really classy and makes me wish I had a laser! The etching possibility is what I'm missing. You can do a lot with traditional woodworking tools but clean work like that is hard to achieve without a laser.
Did you have any problems with getting clean cuts on the 1/2" material? I saw that you made multiple passes. I've just seen that process go badly with the acrylic heating up to much and not yielding a clean 90deg edge.
Also, what brand laser do you have? I think you mentioned but I forgot. I'm down the road from Epilog. Maybe I need to stop in their facility to see if they have any scratch and dent models or prototypes that didn't make it to market.
Thanks for the kind words. The etcher is a Jcut-6090 C02 laser that I purchased from china roughly 3 years ago, I opted to have the 60w bulb replaced with an 80w. because I wanted to slice through 1/2 plexi. Right now it's having a hard time cutting through 3/8". I need to do some realigning of the mirrors to fix the problem, I haven't done any aligning since I moved here. Hopefully I don't need a new tube, if I do i'm going to go with the next size up.
I only used the laser to cut out shapes, all the square cut pieces were done with a tablesaw, cross cut sled and a 6" jointer
I wish i could've purchased an epilog, when i was in the market I lived in cheyenne, I was kept an eye out on the refurbished equipment there in Golden, but the good deals were snatched up right away. You had to be on loine the second it went up or you missed it, I concluded that you had to know someone in the company to get first dibs on those machines.
Wow Jimmy, That looks awesome. I like the way you crated so many slots, so you have ultimate adjustability for the baffles!
My pink Mille is still looking good this AM!
That was all your idea!!! after cutting and gluing all those acrylic pieces, I thought of a better way to make the baffles adjustable by incorporating magnets onto the baffles and moving them much like you would with a mag float for optimum compartment sizing... Oh well.... next time!!!!
Wow, that sump is really nice! How did the seams end up for you? I'm guessing that with laser cuts you were able to get really nice edges and therefore seams with very few bubbles. I find that getting those super clean seams is the toughest part but I don't worry too much about it as long as there are no leaks! Did you use the 4 to wick into the seams and then put a bead of 16 into the corner as a "just in case" measure?
4 days is super fast for building that sump. I am impressed. It took me longer than that to build 12" cubes! :0)
Thank You for the compliments. You guessed wrong, the seams have a lot of air bubbles, there's definitely an art to it, and the more you do it, the better you get at it. I, however am a novice at best, it holds water and looks good from 10 feet away but when you get up close, you can see all the imperfections. I can venture to guess that many sump companies use solid color acrylic in certain places to hide most seems.
And yes the 4 was used to wick the panels in place, most times that's all that was needed but other times it didn't go where I wanted it to or the flow stopped and air was trapped. But as you said, air bubbles are not that big a deal for a sump. After the seam cured with the 4 then I used the 16 much like you would caulk, I ran a bead all the way around to reinforce the seam.
The method that I learned so long ago (and didn't use) was to use acupuncture needles as spacers, the gap was small enough that 4 would still wick and create an airless layer of weldon, let is sit for a bit to allow the acrylic to become soft and then remove the needles one by one allowing the weight of the panel to push the liquefied acrylic out. Maybe next time I will do it that way.
