Who doesn't know the acrylic glass? Most probably yo know it with the name "Plexi glass" which is actually a brand that makes such materials. I use this material a lot. And many times, i want to fold it into an angle. To fold the acrylic glass, it must be heated in a specific temperature (i think this is about 80 ^oC), and then the heated area can be folded easily. When the material is cold again, it will stay as formed.

To heat the material, i used a heat gun, the same that i use for heat-shrinks. But this method has some drawbacks. First of all, you need a lot of time to heat the glass. Also, to fold the material in a straight edge, it must be heated only at this edge. With the heating gun this is impossible as it heats a very big surface. Also, the heating cannot be done evenly. So, i decided to make a heating apparatus!

To heat the material, i will need a heating source. Fist i began searching for heaters like the ones used in electric towel heaters. Too expensive! Nearly $35 for just the heating resistor. But the heater had to be long and thin, something that the towel heaters do qualify. Then i turned into UV heaters, but hey, i got enough UV from the sun, i do not need more... And then i remembered that i have a treasure in my museum. If you happen to have read older projects, you would know about the photo copier that i chopped quite a while ago. The printing was done with laser, and as we all know, laser printers have a heating element long enough to cover the paper width. So, how this heater works?

I located the heater. It was a long thick tube, with a black heat conductive coating. And inside this tube, guess what i found. Guess what heats this tube. A lamp! Yes, inside this tube there was a long lamp, the same that is used for high power head lights. I tested to see if it was working and worked perfectly. The lamp draws 3.5 amperes, which means that it is 840 Watts.

With no further ado, i began making a housing for this lamp:

This is the heater of the laser pronter	And inside i found a high power lamp!	I will use simple profiled metal sheets	I cut 4 pieces from this metal sheet
This is how they will be fixed finally	I made holes to all 4 corners, front and back	And then, using brads to fix them	this is how it looks from the back side

And this is the front side (remember that you can click to all photos to enlarge):

Now i need to make a base for the lamp

For the base, i will use 2 more short pieces of the same profile	From which i cut one side completely	And with the angle grinder i grinned a slot for the flat part of the lamp	This is how the lamp goes into the slot
And this is how the lamp will me fixed into position	Then i made 2 holes to each base	I placed it inside the housing and marked the holes	I fixed the bases on the housing with brads

And this is the final result:

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