Cast acrylic, and why a laser owner asks for it by name
Cast acrylic and extruded acrylic look identical on a shelf and behave differently the moment a beam touches them, which is why a laser owner asks for cast by name and a glazier does not care. Cast is polymerised between glass, so it engraves to an opaque frosted white and cuts with a polished edge; extruded is pushed through a die, is cheaper and more consistent in thickness, and tends to melt at the engraved line rather than frost. Of the nine US suppliers read here that stock it, five print a price and four do not.
- $3.54median of the published figures
- 7suppliers read
- 4material families
Every figure on this page comes from this site's own board: 7 US suppliers read across 4 material families, each figure with its page and its date.
- 7 suppliersevery figure quoted from the supplier's own page
- Word for worda quotation must be an exact substring of the kept page reduction, or the record is not written
- 4 familiesa family counts for a supplier only where its own page carries a figure for it
Material families
| # | Supplier | Cast acrylic, from | Engraving blanks, from · Sublimation blanks, from | Source | Read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AcrylicMeThat | $2.95/from, cheapest 1/8 in patterned cast sheet | acrylicmethat.com | September 2026 | |
| 2 | MakerStock | $2.99/sheet, cheapest thickness and size | makerstock.com | September 2026 | |
| 3 | 3D Universe | $3.54/sheet, 5 x 10 in | shop3duniverse.com | September 2026 | |
| 4 | Johnson Plastics Plus | $3.89/sheet | Engraving blanks, from $1.25/piece | jpplus.com | September 2026 |
| 5 | TAP Plastics | $15/from, size not stated | tapplastics.com | September 2026 | |
| 6 | Acme Plastics | did not answer on the last run | |||
| 7 | BestSub | ||||
| 8 | Coastal Business Supplies | Sublimation blanks, from $20.45/piece | coastalbusiness.com | September 2026 | |
| 9 | ePlastics | ||||
| 10 | eStreet Plastics | did not answer on the last run | |||
| 11 | Interstate Plastics | did not answer on the last run | |||
| 12 | JDS Industries | ||||
| 13 | MakerFlo | Engraving blanks, from $12.93/piece at the deepest printed tier | makerflo.com | September 2026 | |
| 14 | Professional Plastics | publishes no figure | |||
| 15 | Rowmark | ||||
| 16 | Swing Design |
What separates the two, and what it costs
- Cast engraves white, extruded does not. The reason this material is bought by name is the engraved line. Cast acrylic goes opaque and white where the beam passes, so an engraved logo reads at arm's length without any fill; extruded tends to melt and re-flow, leaving a line that is clear against clear and nearly invisible. That is the whole difference for most of the work this buyer does, and it is why a supplier page that does not say which one it is selling has not answered the question.
- Extruded cuts faster and is cheaper. Extruded acrylic is made continuously rather than in batches, so it costs less, comes in tighter thickness tolerance and cuts at higher speed with less power. For a part that is cut and never engraved, that is the better buy, and for anything flame-polished or vacuum-formed it is usually the intended material. The trade-off is only ever about the engraved surface, not about quality in general.
- The published prices, and what they are prices of. Across the nine suppliers stocking cast acrylic, the published figures run from $2.95 to $15.00 with a median of $3.54, and the spread is mostly a unit difference rather than a price difference. MakerStock's $2.99 has a stock-size ladder printed under it from 8 by 12 up to 24 by 48 inches; TAP Plastics' From $15.00 is a cut-to-size floor with no size stated anywhere on the page. The table on this site says which each figure is.
- What nobody publishes. Four of the nine print nothing. Three of those pages did not answer at all when they were read, and Professional Plastics' cast acrylic page now returns a live page that says the page is no longer available, which is the worst kind of dead link because nothing upstream flags it. Those are recorded as four different absences rather than as one blank cell.
Common questions
- Is cast acrylic better than extruded?
- For engraving, yes, because it frosts white where extruded melts clear. For cutting alone, extruded is cheaper and cuts faster. Neither is better in general.
- How do I tell which one a supplier is selling?
- Only by what the page says. Several of the suppliers read here print a price without naming cast or extruded anywhere on the page; where that is the case this site records it.
- What does cast acrylic cost?
- The five US suppliers read that publish a figure print $2.95 to $15.00, median $3.54. Each row on this site says what the figure buys, because two of them do not state a size.
The prices by family
Sources
Cite or embed this figure
The published entry prices in all five families together was $3.54 in read in September 2026, across 7 suppliers recorded in Laser Materials Compare Laser material price transparency.
Cite as: "Laser Materials Compare Laser material price transparency", updated 2026-09-11, https://lasermaterialscompare.com/cast-acrylic/.