Methylene Chloride Vapor to polish cast Acrylic

Hello all, I have never really used reddit, not sure if this the right subreddit to post on, but had a question regarding Methylene Chloride.

One of my jobs is to produce some high grade medical equipment made of cast acrylic. Now I have to manually polish these with a really nasty polishing compound wearing a mask etc and it's very labor intensive on my back and lungs and hands. The product I receive has a somewhat frosted texture on the surface due to manufacturing, and while flame polishing it is decent, it can only get me so far.

I have seen that methylene chloride gas can provide a very nice finish while only melting the very top of the cast acrylic. I was thinking if it was possible to create an enclosure that would inject a small amount of this gas into the area it would polish it much faster, and without all the strain on my body.

If anyone has any experience doing this I would love to hear about it. I am NOT a chemist.

Additionally, I would post pictures of the products but unfortunately I am unable to do that due to security reasons.

Posted Feb 11, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

27
Loading comments…