Has anybody tried to rout styrene ?

[pickelhaube]

No doubt I have way too much on my plate now. But I am still thinking of doing the mine rollers for the Sherman.

Those disks are big and will use up a lot of RTV to make the molds as well as resin. But I do have a bunch of 1/8 black styrene that I could make them out of.

I was thinking of making a template and making them with a router. Will the high speed speed of the router melt the plastic or if I cut slowly would it do the job ?

Thanks for any input.

[aae83]

I've used a milling bit in a drill press to cut channels in PVC. I set the drill press to the lowest speed I could: around 250 rpm. Higher speeds definitely melted the PVC. Working slowly helped, as you suggest.

The properties of styrene are different, and the melting temperature is a little higher, I think. However, my gut says the router will melt it in an instant, at the speeds they typically run (in 1000s of rpm). Also, according to wikepedia, styrene can be "easily ignited", so watch out for that.

Could you use a hole saw to rough cut them, then mount a stack of them on a shaft in a drill and sand/shape them down to their final diameter? Just a thought; hope it's useful.

aae83

[pickelhaube]

I've used a milling bit in a drill press to cut channels in PVC. I set the drill press to the lowest speed I could: around 250 rpm. Higher speeds definitely melted the PVC. Working slowly helped, as you suggest.

The properties of styrene are different, and the melting temperature is a little higher, I think. However, my gut says the router will melt it in an instant, at the speeds they typically run (in 1000s of rpm). Also, according to wikepedia, styrene can be "easily ignited", so watch out for that.

aae83

RATS

[aferguson]

t-34/85
Go-229
Su-85
King tiger porsche turret, jagdtiger
Su-122


and you're worrying about how to make sherman mine rollers??

Focus my dear, pH.

[Jesse James]

PH,

I work with styrene a lot, and while it's the core of a lot of the 1:18 world, it's unfortunately not easy to work with using power tools. You can buy special blades and things for cutting it, however I'm not sure you can get routing bits that will work, nor am I sure you could get the router to spin at an RPM low enough that it simply won't melt it. That's the unfortunate thing when using dremel tools and such on styrene and why the variable speed is a must...

It's easy to work with on one hand, but on the other it's a real bear. Especially doing rounded shapes from scratch.