Well once the photo gallery comes online I will post some pictures in here of my sump that show up in the thread. For now I am linking them from www.thereeftank.com
I built this sump from some scrap 1/2" acrylic that I aquired a few months ago. This was my very first endever into building acrylic products. Now I have to say that I really like working with this stuff, but it does reqiure a bit of precision to get a nice seam. On this first project I didn't manage to get any seams to come out very nice, so I added a square stock to each corner to beef it up a little bit. Basically the sump is about 30"x15"x17" I used a white piece of 1/4" material for the bottom and 1 baffle
This was a project that cost me a total of about $15 for glue and a flush trim router bit(all acrylic was free, it came from a large tank that was in really bad shape) So anyway I used a standard ripping blade on a tablesaw, which made a pretty rough cut w/ lots of chips. I then squared it all up with a flush trim router bit and used a straight edge as a guide set back from the desired edge 2 5/8" This method works pretty good but is very tedious. I now do all my cutting at a friends place who has a full size table saw and a 80 tooth freud blade that makes nice clean cuts in the acrylic. I used the 'pin' method of gluing which involves raising the panel you want to glue down off the mating surface a very small amount (8# test monofiliment works well). You have to use shims under each pin to keep the gap perfectly even, if not you will get a lot of bubbles. Anyway once perfectly spaced you apply weldon 4 with the special applicator bottle into the gap. After about 45 seconds or so you start at the end opposite where you finished applying and pull the pins out. Once the last pin is pulled the panel should settle down and squeeze a thick clear fluid out just a tiny bit. As it cures it will suck it back in. If the edge was not totally perfect it will suck in a bunch of bubbles and make a ugly joint. So anyway I will post a few pictures of that sump both watertesting it and then installed.
If you have any questions please ask.
and finally the link here is to a picture of the sump that I just took
I built this sump from some scrap 1/2" acrylic that I aquired a few months ago. This was my very first endever into building acrylic products. Now I have to say that I really like working with this stuff, but it does reqiure a bit of precision to get a nice seam. On this first project I didn't manage to get any seams to come out very nice, so I added a square stock to each corner to beef it up a little bit. Basically the sump is about 30"x15"x17" I used a white piece of 1/4" material for the bottom and 1 baffle
This was a project that cost me a total of about $15 for glue and a flush trim router bit(all acrylic was free, it came from a large tank that was in really bad shape) So anyway I used a standard ripping blade on a tablesaw, which made a pretty rough cut w/ lots of chips. I then squared it all up with a flush trim router bit and used a straight edge as a guide set back from the desired edge 2 5/8" This method works pretty good but is very tedious. I now do all my cutting at a friends place who has a full size table saw and a 80 tooth freud blade that makes nice clean cuts in the acrylic. I used the 'pin' method of gluing which involves raising the panel you want to glue down off the mating surface a very small amount (8# test monofiliment works well). You have to use shims under each pin to keep the gap perfectly even, if not you will get a lot of bubbles. Anyway once perfectly spaced you apply weldon 4 with the special applicator bottle into the gap. After about 45 seconds or so you start at the end opposite where you finished applying and pull the pins out. Once the last pin is pulled the panel should settle down and squeeze a thick clear fluid out just a tiny bit. As it cures it will suck it back in. If the edge was not totally perfect it will suck in a bunch of bubbles and make a ugly joint. So anyway I will post a few pictures of that sump both watertesting it and then installed.If you have any questions please ask.
and finally the link here is to a picture of the sump that I just took
