Has anyone made their plate out of Acrylic? Is it a bad idea? (& Q about BBS)

[Vozella]

I got my quote from BigBlueSaw and it cost me about $150 (which is better than $500 if you saw my other thread). I said to make it to where the plate was Stainless Steel and the rest was Clear Acrylic.
What if I make the whole thing out of Acrylic? It'll be $50. Right? Will it be less stable? Unstable even?
I don't know what Acrylic feels like. I'm not sure what it is.

I also have a question about BigBlueSaw. They quoted me twice because I put down two different materials. (Steel and Acrylic.) What if I only put down Stainless Steel? Will it be $110?
I'd ask for a quote again, but I don't want to spam them.

[blueangel2323]

Acrylic is basically the same thing as Plexiglas. Actually Plexiglas is a brand name for clear acrylic sheets, like Kleenex is a brand name for facial tissue. Acrylic is less rigid than glass and steel at the same thickness, but Plexiglass sheets are much thicker than the steel plates used in keyboards. Just make sure that the it's not so thick that the keycaps hit the surface of the acrylic when bottoming out.

[inanis]

Check out Spirt's threads in the GB section, he has tons of examples of acrylic plates. He seems to be MIA lately, but you will get the idea from the pictures. I have one of his clear acrylic plates on my GON 60. I'd take a pic but I don't have it with me.

[Findecanor]

This has come up before. There are several threads where this has been discussed already.

Anyway.. A regular plate for Cherry MX switches is 1.5 mm thick. It can't be thicker than ~1.6 mm or so if the switches are going to snap to the plate. A single sheet of acrylic in that thickness would be too brittle for direct wiring, but it could hold up if you have a PCB.
If you go acrylic, then there are two options:
- Use 1.5 mm thick acrylic but make sure that it is very well supported. You could have a second plate with larger switch holes glued to the underside of the plate, but then it would not no longer be transparent and you would probably want to paint it before mounting the switches.
- Use a thicker sheet of acrylic for the plate: up to 5 mm. Then the switches would not snap to the plate - only be force-fitted to it. You would have to glue them in ... or of course, use a PCB.