Sanded, cut, and polished used acrylic aquarium. Pics

[enveetie]

Hi everyone,

After a 10+ year break from the hobby and forums, I picked up a 24x24x12 acrylic tank as an impulse buy. The tank needed a lot of scratch removal work and since I work in automotive finish restoration I decided to apply some of my work related skills and tools/materials to restore this acrylic aquarium.

Basically, I performed what I would call an extensive paint restoration process that I would do on cars on this tank.

I wet sanded the tank inside and out with 600 and 2000 paper. Then wet sanded using a dual action orbital sander with 1500, 3000, and 5000 3M Trizact discs. Finally I cut and polished the acrylic with 3M's Perfect-it system numbers 1, 2, and 3.

The acrylic is now crystal clear without a single scratch on it. I just built a basic 40" tall stand and planning out the rest of the tank now.

Links to the pics: http://imgur.com/a/NEZb4

Not sure how reefcentral prefers pic posts, links or direct uploads, please let me know.

I'm sure some folks may have questions about how to do this on their own, especially if they don't have prior experience with these automotive finishing tools, so feel free to post and I'll answer whatever I can.

(go steelers)

 

[mcgyvr]

You must be a new member and posted external links..
We can't see your post.. A moderator will come by eventually and "unlock" it or whatever appropriate measure needs to be done..

Just letting you know that we can't see anything "yet"..

 

[reefer roman]

looks real nice. Good work

 

[Sandy Cheeks]

What do you do for the corners?
I've used Micromesh 5" discs on an orbital sander but dealing with the corners is a PITA
Great job.

 

[TheFishGuy31]

Looks great. I've been working on a 280g... I wish I had known that the swirl remover was supposed to be used with water.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Sandy Cheeks]

How do 3M products and Novus compare to each other? Novus has also a 3-part system.
I'm not familiar to 3M and being automotive products, I assume they are a bit more expensive than Novus.

 

[DasCamel]

I polished the 375, major PITA. Used a combo of novus and auto products. Never doing it again.

 

[Sandy Cheeks]

I polished the 375, major PITA. Used a combo of novus and auto products. Never doing it again.

Checking your tank thread...

 

[DasCamel]

Checking your tank thread...

Have fun!

 

[Rodeo_Roger]

Well done!

 

[Mrsmms24]

Help

Help

HeLp I tryied to buff my acrylic tank and think I messed it up , everytime I wipe it get clear them comes back to this haze in these 2 spots what do I need to do to fix this ???

 

[Sandy Cheeks]

HeLp I tryied to buff my acrylic tank and think I messed it up , everytime I wipe it get clear them comes back to this haze in these 2 spots what do I need to do to fix this ???

I think you still have to do some of the sanding with fine grit products.
If you have an orbital sander and a GFCI, try Micromesh.

 

[Sandy Cheeks]

As you work your way up you will see the roughness clear. I've used Novus #2 for polishing at the final stages with a buffing pad.

 

[enveetie]

Sorry guys I completely forgot I posted this!

Novus is much more expensive than the 3M Perfect-it system I used when you evaluate cost by the ounce. For example, I get a quart of each compound for about 35 dollars each, and 3M is pretty expensive for automotive compounds. I would assume the Novus system doesn't use any filler products than some automotive compounds do. How these fillers affect a reef I cannot say, but a thorough washing will remove it easily as it does off of cars. I've never used Novus, but for what it is intended to do it can't be anything more than a buffing/polishing compound... which is just liquid and clay of varying levels of grit. Think of compound as liquid sandpaper; it doesn't get complicated as much as they would like you to believe it is.

For the corners I used a foam block, wrapped in corresponding sand paper, and hand sanded it. For compound and polish in the corners, I used a microfiber towel to hand buff. It's never as good as using the buffing and polishing pads, but once filled with water you can't tell any difference at all since water fills in any imperfections.

 

[enveetie]

Mrmms24, you need to sand or polish more to remove those scratches.

What did you use and what did you do to put those marks there? If you can tell me, I can more easily assist.

It looks to me you sanded the panel by hand. Look at it this way, you had some scratches you wanted to remove. You sanded the area, removing the big original scratches but introduced medium sized scratches which still show. Now you need to move to a finer medium to sand away the medium scratches you put into it trying to remove the big scratches, which will leave you with small scratches. Next, you need to move to an even finer medium to sand away the small scratches... repeat until the scratches are so fine that they're "gone".

Hand sanding is very abrasive, much more than machine sanding, believe it or not. Not to mention very tiring to the point you would easily give up prematurely.