Styrene acrylonitrile plastic, properties?

[DennisCA]

Anyone heard of this before? I can get it pretty cheaply at a local store, it could come in handy for making a transparent suva guard, I'm a bit tired of my sheet metal one because I really like to see what I am doing. I feel much safer that way, so to that end I am looking at this.

But I am not sure if the properties of this material are suitable or not, if it's like plexiglass which likes to shatter it's no good, but if its more like polycarbonate then it'd be quite suitable. But I've never heard of it before so I'm hoping someone here has.

It can be bent with a heatgun so I think it might be good for other things like a thien style separator that you can see through.

 

[whiskywill]

I've had a browse and find that both the tensile and the impact strengths of Styrene Acrylonitrile (SA) are higher than that of Plexiglass (Polymethyl Methacrylate or PMMA).
SA PMMA
Tensile strength. 80MPa 65MPa
Impact strength. 0.3J/cm 0.21J/cm

The uses listed here seems to suggest that it is pretty tough stuff. http://www.bpf.co.uk/plastipedia/polymers/SAN.aspx

 

[DennisCA]

Interesting, perhaps it can have it's uses after all then. Thanks!

 

[rafezetter]

I've worked in the plastics industry a while and my last work supplied this in various sheet forms - it's very tough stuff - stonger than both acrylic and plexiglass for the same thickness - it also has excellent transparency, almost that of glass - impact resistance is very, very good - I was told by one supplier that a 20mm thick sheet is all but bulletproof - however thinner sheets have a tendency to shatter under certain circumstances - I found when trying to cut it that simply scoring and putting pressure on the underside of that line on a bench resulted in a very jagged break instead of a clean one, going past the line too, so I would advise a proper cut through it. Beware the edges can be sharp.

I can't comment on heat bending it as I've not tried that but most plastics will do that without problems as long as the heat isn't too hot, or in one spot too long. The problem is always mantaining the heat over the area to be bent as plastic cools fast, a good solution is a blowlamp / heatgun into a hollow metal tube on a stand of some kind.

hth