Structure - Acrylic/Lexan or Melamine only?

[lehthanis]

Hi all, I hope this is a good place to ask this question...I've recently built a Rostock Max v2 here at work, and I LOVE it...I love it so much I'd like to build my own from scratch rather than from Kit. I have a buddy that has laser cutter access...and was thinking about cutting the frame from the cad files out of lexan or acrylic instead of melamine. Do you all think that 1/4" thick lexan or acrylic would hold up to the structural integrity of the melamine for a full size Rostock based build?

[Nylocke]

Polycarb might be fine, but the early Indiegogo V1 MAXes were Acrylic and they had problems of sorts. The acrylic is much more brittle than melamine, so people could crack their frame by over tightening bolts a bit too much or setting it down a little less than gently.

[Tonkabot]

We had a guy in our robot club that built a 6-legged robot out of acrylic (aka plexiglass?). He spent a lot of time and made this beautiful thing, and then decided that he wanted to clean up some of the stains or marks. He washed it off good with isopropal alcohol. A few hours latter every single part shattered into small fragments.

I checked the interwebs and their were youtube demos of the shattering effects...

I would go with the Lexan aka polycarbonite

[JFettig]

Just remember not to get Acetone on your polycarb!

Search youtube for that if you want explanations - it really behaves weird!

[Polygonhell]

I thought laser cutting polycarbonate was a no no, but I might be mistaken. You want to stay away from acrylic, any stress at all and it cracks, anything right fitting, any screw over tightened etc etc etc.
I'd stick to some wood product.

[Eaglezsoar]

I was the owner of one of the SeeMeCNC's acrylic machines that they made when they first got into the business of making printers and I had nothing but problems due to all the random
cracks that would appear. It finally got so bad that I bought the wood only kit and moved all of my parts to the wood. End of problems.