Best tool for cutting thick plexi?

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MegaRouge

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I'm considering a mod on my case that requires me cutting a rectangular hole (about the size of a CDROM drive) in the center of some 3/8 inch plexi. This hole has to be very neat and I don't have any second chances if I mess it up (the plexi is part of the case and I can't get a new piece). Any ideas what sort of tool I could use to cut this? I did cut a circular hole in it with a holesaw and that went well, but I don't have any tool right now that I feel confident I could cut this rectangular hole neatly with. I don't own a dremel, so cutting disks aren't an option. Any ideas would be appreciated.
 
a good tool to use would be a jigsaw, as long as you follow the lines you drew, it should be pretty straight

all you have to do is drill out the corners with a big enough bit for your jigsaw blade to fit and then cut out the rectangle and file the corners and any rough edges

hope that helps
 
Thanks Dunks. I considered a jigsaw but I'm a bit worried about cracking the plexi if I used that. I used a jigsaw to cut some thinner plexi a while ago and it left small cracks along the length of the cut and I can't have that here. Maybe if I used a finer blade on the saw it wouldn't do that. This is one of those one shot, can't screw it up things so I want to be very sure before I tried it. I do still have the circular piece of this plexi that I cut out using the holesaw, so I can test on that, but it's not a very big piece.
 
Originally posted by MegaRouge
Thanks Dunks. I considered a jigsaw but I'm a bit worried about cracking the plexi if I used that. I used a jigsaw to cut some thinner plexi a while ago and it left small cracks along the length of the cut and I can't have that here. Maybe if I used a finer blade on the saw it wouldn't do that. This is one of those one shot, can't screw it up things so I want to be very sure before I tried it. I do still have the circular piece of this plexi that I cut out using the holesaw, so I can test on that, but it's not a very big piece.
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finer blade should do the trick
 
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