Master Acrylic Cutting with a CNC Machine: A Step‑by‑Step Guide

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.

Today, we gonna talk about what CNC machines can be used to cut acrylic and how to use and choose them.

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.
Let’s take a look at the laser machine and CNC router machine for acrylic respectively.

Laser acrylic cutting machine

The acrylic laser cutting machine uses the high temperature of a laser beam irradiated to the surface to melt the acrylic. Laser cut acrylic workpieces have smooth and clean cutting edges. And laser engraving acrylic products also have clear and durable lines and letters. Besides, laser cutting and laser engraving acrylic are easy to learn and operate.

The extruded acrylic is still transparent after the laser engraving process, and will not show too much contrast. However, the melting point of extruded acrylic is relatively low, so the acrylic CNC cutting effect will be much better. Meanwhile, the cutting edges are also relatively smooth and transparent. However, the frosting effect of the cast acrylic after being engraved is in sharp contrast with the texture of the original transparent acrylic. 

Therefore, the laser cut acrylic projects mainly adopt extruded acrylic boards. While the cast acrylic is more suitable for laser engraving acrylic projects.

Laser acrylic cutting machine demonstration

The acrylic laser cutting machine belongs to the CO2 laser cutter adopting a CO2 laser source. Generally, the laser power of the acrylic laser cutter is less than 200W. Because the CO2 laser cutter is mainly for cutting non-metallic materials. And the power of 200W is sufficient for cutting most non-metals.

A CO2 laser cutting machine can cut acrylic boards with a thickness of 0-25mm. Blue Elephant now can offer two standard models of laser acrylic cutters, namely 1325 and 1390. You can click to know more details.