Acrylic vs MDF?

Hi guys. I'm looking for quotes from different suppliers to make my frame of acrylic when I stumbled upon a comment of nophead suggesting MDF may be more stable vibration wise than acrylic.

What you guys think? I wanted to go acrylic to avoid MDFs absorption of humidity that may expand or contact the frame in dry days.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/2014 06:45PM by GAZ082.

Hi,

I would go with whatever you find easier to work with. MDF, ideally, would require sealing in order to reduce the effects of humidity. Acrylic can be challenging to machine by hand.

With sensible acceleration values and print speeds I think that vibration can be kept at a manageable level even for acrylic.

Regards,
Neil Darlow

---

I try to write with consideration for all nationalities. Please let me know if something is unclear.
Printing with Mendel90 from fedora 25 using Cura, FreeCAD, MeshLab, OpenSCAD, Skeinforge and Slic3r tools.

I'd go with option c, dibond (or similar). Easier to work with than acrylic, easy to cut/machine with everyday tools, lightweight, as cheap if not cheaper than acrylic, far lighter than MDF, and more dimensionally stable than MDF.

Mmm, here in Argentina is common in 4-5mm thickness, not more. I should use 10mm as in acrilyc, right?

My Mendel 90 uses MDF. I don't have any complaints.

After manually cutting all the boards I went to the store and got a small bucket of black paint & primer in one. Then put 2 coats on with a roller. It's been a year and I haven't had any issues.