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backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:08 am
by jwpattr
I found some plastic mirror material at my local plastics supplier and decided that it would be great to make one of these paper crafting backpacks out of the mirror material. The material is about 1/16 of an inch thick. It looks exactily like real glass mirror and comes with a thin plastc covering to keep it from getting scratched. The material not very flexible and will snap if you bend it too far. I've found that it can be heated and bent like most other plastic. However, the heat will tend to ruin the mirror effect of the area heated up. I was told by the salesman that he plastic mirror was made of a composite of three layers, a backing, a VERY thin metal/mylar layer, covered by hard clear acrylic layer. Here are some pictures of the material itself:
plastic_mirror.jpg
mirror with protective sheet peeled back
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plastic_mirror.jpg
mirror with protective sheet peeled back
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plastic_mirror2.jpg
side of a piece of plastic mirror
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plastic_mirror2.jpg
side of a piece of plastic mirror
plastic_mirror2.jpg (121.25 KiB) Viewed 3223 times
plastic_mirror3.jpg
Front showing half of mirror covered with protective sheet and half without
plastic_mirror3.jpg (131.68 KiB) Viewed 3223 times
plastic_mirror3.jpg
Front showing half of mirror covered with protective sheet and half without
plastic_mirror3.jpg (131.68 KiB) Viewed 3223 times

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:20 am
by jwpattr
Here are some completed photos of the backpack:
complete.jpg
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complete.jpg
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complete_back.jpg
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complete_back.jpg
complete_back.jpg (142.49 KiB) Viewed 3221 times
complete_top.jpg

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:40 am
by jwpattr
I used a cutting wheel on a dremmel tool to cut the plastic mirror pieces out of the pattern posted here (I removed the tabs from the pattern pieces). Then I used CA and zip kicker to glue it all together. On pieces that requred a great deal of bending to shape them, I simply used regular white styrene plastic and a heat gun to form the shapes. Then I used adhesive chrome covering from model airplanes to cover those types of styrene parts. Here are some photos of the tools used:
dremel.jpg
cutting wheel
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dremel.jpg
cutting wheel
dremel.jpg (116.31 KiB) Viewed 3220 times
pattern.jpg
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pattern.jpg
pattern.jpg (99.72 KiB) Viewed 3220 times
cement.jpg
Ruber cement used to hold pattern pieces to plastic while cutting.
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cement.jpg
Ruber cement used to hold pattern pieces to plastic while cutting.
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tools.jpg
various tools used
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tools.jpg
various tools used
tools.jpg (137.34 KiB) Viewed 3220 times
adhesivefoil.jpg
used to cover styrene pieces that needed to be bent to shape.
adhesivefoil.jpg (104.91 KiB) Viewed 3220 times
adhesivefoil.jpg
used to cover styrene pieces that needed to be bent to shape.
adhesivefoil.jpg (104.91 KiB) Viewed 3220 times

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 4:37 am
by SiR-ROUND
Pretty cool!

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 6:06 am
by groupleaderzeta
looks great.

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2011 11:00 am
by GoldCylon
Knock it out of the park using that material. I have seen this stuff before but never gave it much thought like the item you mentioned. I looked more at trying to bend it aka the helmet, and knew it wouldn't work so never tried it, but your back pack looks great.

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2011 1:22 pm
by Hand-Schaub
Looks great! A bit of chrome tape on the seams and pow - you got it!

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2011 1:39 am
by Big Al
:cylongold: Awesome Job...Looks great! :salute:

Re: backpack made out of plastic mirror

Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 10:35 am
by DougMorency