Around 30 years ago, I was a Year 7 student, and one of the first projects I made then was an acrylic keyring. The profile was cut with a hacksaw, the edges smoothed with a file, wet ‘n’ dry paper and then polished with T-Cut. Once the keyring was polished it was heated for around five minutes using a traditional strip heater. Even now, all these years on, I can remember the line of students waiting for their turn to heat the acrylic up.

Nowadays, many schools use laser cutters to shape acrylic in seconds, rather than the weeks it took me to make my keyring. It is still however very much the case that bends and twists in acrylic are achieved by the rather slow process of heating using a strip heater/line bender. Most schools have old strip heaters and I guess that until now, using a strip heater is ‘just the way it’s done’.

Whilst learning about thermoforming polymers may be an objective you wish to teach, the time taken to actually see it in action can now be speeded up massively by the use of acrylic benders. Acrylic can now be heated and bent in around 15 seconds, as opposed to five minutes.

The bender’s anodised aluminium plates both concentrate the heat ,and apply it to both sides of the acrylic at once, thus speeding up the heating The exact same learning outcome can be achieved by a whole class in minutes, with very little waiting time, rather than needing a few lessons for a class to heat and shape the acrylic the traditional method.

The pair of acrylic benders available can be used to heat a 3mm line (useful for tight, accurate work) or a 50mm gap (suitable for larger curves or twists). They operate at low power, 60W, meaning they are cheap to run. They heat up in around 90 seconds and will heat 3mm acrylic around 15 seconds. 

Due to the thin profile of the tool, for the first time ever, shapes can be produced that the tradition strip heater could not. No longer will students need to hold acrylic near a hot element or wait in line for what seems like a whole lesson.

When bought, the set of acrylic benders come as a pair, a thin 3mm and wide 50mm. The heating element is 100mm long. Also included in the kit is a ‘how to use guide’, a model risk assessment for school use and some sample acrylic parts for make a couple of phone stands and some acrylic twists suitable for using with a windchime.

You can also check out the acrylic benders on the ‘dtresourcesltd’ Instagram account or via the website: