Is laminated styrene machinable?

[LDO]

Plastic is ideal for a project I have in mind. Can Evergreen be turned and milled?

Thanks, Laurence Jamison.

[mr moto]

I have no personal experience with this since I don't do any machining and, of course, the ultimate answer is "try it and find out" but I have seen someone in the local club make parts by lathe turning tooth brush and screwdriver handles.

[E St. Kruiser50]

Plastic is ideal for a project I have in mind. Can Evergreen be turned and milled?

Thanks, Laurence Jamison.

Evergreen's plastic is pretty soft for machining.

I was a machinist/ toolmaker for many years in the plastics industry, so have worked with every conceiveable plastic and metal there is.

TECHNICAL HELP;

Everygreen's plastic is extruded, where as plastic kit parts are injected molded.

Injected molded parts are much tougher and much more ridged - MUCH BETTER FOR MACHINING.

If it were me, I'd find some kit plastic, cut it into the sizes you want and use a good glue that will "ATTACK" the plastic and fuse it together. DEFINATELY "NOT" SUPER GLUE.

I've done this many times and the kit plastic gives far superior results.

As for the Evergreen plastic, it's a wonderful product for other types of "Static" projects, such as scratch-building where machining isn't necessary.

Hope this helps - dave

[LDO]

I haven't machined anything for several years. I had forgotten that I once tried making a Ferrari V-12 engine block out of laminated Evergreen. Not the best choice but it worked as far as machining was concerned. (I never finished that one. I found out my reference material was all wrong). This project is a 1/8 scale blower. This one will be generic, but have a case like a S.CO.T. or Bendix; half-round on each side with strengthening ribs. I glued up some .100" with Weld-On 3 last night; two big chunks of 4 layers each. The plan is to turn them to a cylinder shape and cut ribs into it, then pop it apart and put a spacer in between them. I don't have a 4-jaw chuck so I have to turn between centers. I used a triangular file to make a little hole for inserting the centers. Then I joined those with a few drops of CA. Crude but close enough for something that will not have any moving parts.

It's a blower similar to this:

[Modelmartin]

I am a machinist, also. I should think the piece you glued together would be machinable. Use a very sharp tool and don't spin it too fast. When turning styrene the heat of cutting will soften it pretty quickly. Either go real light on your cuts or blow air on it to keep it cool while you are machining. It isn't too hard to find styrene bar stock in different diameters. I have had real good luck turning all kinds of parts from it. I wouldn't use acrylic rod(plexi) because it chips real bad when machining. Good luck.

[LDO]

Thanks, Andy. It was indeed a pain to turn between centers. I had to turn very slowly and take shallow cuts. I just made one end round so I could put that end in the 3-jaw chuck. Here it is so far:

It's only the half-round sides of the case. There's still lots of work to do. It's sitting beside the engine that will get supercharged; TDR's 1/8 scale Offenhauser 270.