Acrylic Tube
Acrylic tubing is a high clarity tubing that has numerous favorable properties. Acrylic tubing will not age and is not affected by sunlight, despite misconceptions that acrylic tubes yellows, turns brittle and cracks over time. In addition, acrylic tubing retains good stability under the variable conditions such as heat, cold, moisture, and will not warp, crack, craze or corrode. Acrylic tubing proves to be advantageous over glass tubing since it is half the weight of comparable glass, a better insulator and offers increased impact resistance and durability. Cast acrylic tubing in particular is known for its excellent tensile strength, as it is 17 times stronger than glass, and outstanding light transmission properties. Typically, acrylic tubes are used in applications such as POP displays, toys, surgical devices, museum displays, product design, laboratory equipment, home furnishings and lighting. An FDA approved material, acrylic tubing is often used in industries including marine, commercial, food and beverage, industrial, OEM, utility, architecture, fine arts, optical and biomedical. Acrylic tubes are easy to fabricate as well as being cost-effective tubing solutions.
There are two main types of acrylic tubing: extruded and cell cast. The extruded tubing process is the same as a regular extrusion process except for the die. To be extruded, thermoplastic pellets are fed into a hopper placed atop a closed extruding channel. Gravity feeds the raw plastic material down into the extruding channel; inside the channel is a screw conveyor which moves the raw plastic towards the opposite end, shearing and heating the plastic through friction. Electric heaters built into the extruding channel ensure that the plastic is completely molten by the time it comes to the die at the end of the channel. The die works by forming the molten plastic into a specific profile as it is pushed through by the screw conveyor. In order to create the hollow inside of the tubing, a pin or mandrel must be placed inside of the die and a positive pressure is applied to the internal cavities through the pin. The newly formed tubing is instantly cooled with cold water, pulled through by a series of conveyors and cut to length. In cell casting acrylic tubing is produced by assembling a mold for each individual tube, and then pouring the acrylic materials into the mold with a funnel or similar device. Next, the molds are placed into curing tanks before being placed in a post-curing oven. The molds are then cooled, disassembled, and the tubes removed.