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Forming styrene into a cylinder


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What size diameter are we talking about?

 

Place a flat piece of styrene on a soft mouse pad or a piece of foam mat for camping and roll a wooden dowel or anything that is round over the styrene. The plastic should curl itself up by doing this repeatedly. And maybe make the circumference dimension slightly larger. You can always cut to match the correct diameter it later. It may take some practice, but that is the only way I could think of.

 

And for small diameters up to 10mm or so, Evergreen or Plastruct extruded styrene is the easiest way.

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I usually construct a bobbin shape using a rod and 2 disks (of the diameter I need)  to serve as a skeleton.    Then I wrap 0.25mm styrene around it, gluing section by section.   Before wrapping I normally make the styrene curl up by repeatedly sliding it against the edge of the table.    I grab the bottom edge of the styrene and the top end I hold down with the palm of my other hand.  And I just pull it down against the edge.  Several passes does the trick.

 

MVgfiRX.jpg

 

I've also had success wrapping the styrene around a pvc pipe and tying it down before dunking it into boiling water for 8 or so seconds (not more than 10 or the styrene will warp).   Then quickly rinsing it with cold water to freeze the shape.

Edited by crackerjazz
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On 2/11/2017 at 1:06 AM, CorsairMan said:

I'm going to be doing a bit of scratch building and I need some cylindrical shapes. I've got plenty of styrene. But need a way to make cylinders. 

 

Maybe I'm saying the obvious, but thin styrene is much easier to roll into a cilinder compared to thick styrene. I've made nice thin-walled cilinders by rolling Evergreen thinnest plastic card (0.1 mm) over a suitable cilindrical shape, gluing it while rolling. You do need to roll it to a couple of layers, otherwise the stiffness kink will give you a balloon shape.

 

Rob

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