What is acrylic board

Acrylic plate is polymerized by methyl methacrylate monomer (MMA), that is polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) plate and plexiglass, "plexiglass" comes from the trade name "orglas" (a kind of PMMA plate) and "organic glass" (plexiglass).

Acrylic casting board: high molecular weight, excellent stiffness, strength and excellent chemical resistance. This kind of plate is characterized by small batch processing, incomparable flexibility in color system and surface texture effect, and complete product specifications, suitable for various special purposes.

Acrylic Extrusion board: compared with the casting board, the molecular weight of the extruded board is lower and the mechanical properties are slightly weaker. However, this feature is conducive to bending and thermoforming, and is conducive to rapid vacuum forming when dealing with large-size plates. At the same time, the thickness tolerance of extrusion plate is smaller than that of casting plate. As the extrusion plate is a mass automatic production, the color and specification are inconvenient to adjust, so the product specification diversity is limited.

What material is acrylic and why is it called acrylic

Acrylic, also known as PMMA or plexiglass, comes from acrylic (acrylic plastic), transliteration is "acrylic" (so "acrylic" is a transliteration), chemical name is polymethylmethacrylate.

Acrylic is a plastic polymer material with good transparency, chemical stability and weather resistance, easy dyeing, easy processing and beautiful appearance, which is widely used in the construction industry. Generally, it can be divided into cast plastic plate, plexiglass plate and extruded products.

Properties of acrylic

1. It has crystal like transparency, light transmittance over 92%, soft light and clear vision. Acrylic dyed with dye has good color development effect.

2. Acrylic board has excellent weather resistance, high surface hardness and gloss, and good high temperature performance.

3. Acrylic board has good processing performance, which can be hot formed or machined.

4. Transparent acrylic sheet has a light transmittance comparable with glass, but its density is only half of that of glass. In addition, it is not as fragile as glass, even if damaged, it will not form sharp fragments like glass.

5. The wear resistance of acrylic plate is close to that of aluminum, with good stability and resistance to various chemicals.

6. Acrylic board has good printability and spraying property. The surface decoration effect of acrylic products can be given by using proper printing and spraying process.

7. Fire resistance: not spontaneous combustion, but belongs to inflammable goods, does not have self extinguishing.

Application of acrylic

PMMA has the advantages of light weight, low price and easy molding. Its molding methods include casting, injection molding, machining, thermoforming, etc. In particular, injection molding can be mass produced with simple process and low cost. Therefore, it is widely used in instrument parts, automobile lamps, optical lenses, transparent pipes and so on.

Due to the difficulty and high cost of acrylic production, there are many low-cost substitutes in the market. These substitutes, also known as "acrylic", are actually ordinary organic boards or composite boards (also known as sandwich boards). Ordinary organic board is cast with ordinary organic glass cracking material and pigment. The surface hardness is low, easy to fade, and the polishing effect is poor after grinding with fine sand. The composite board only has a very thin layer of acrylic on the surface, and ABS plastic in the middle. It is easy to delamination due to thermal expansion and cold shrinkage in use. The true and false acrylic can be identified from the slight color difference and polishing effect of the plate section.