Acrylic Display Cases & Cabinets

This is the enclosure side of our acrylic work: boxes, cases, cabinets and trays. If what you need is something to raise a product up and angle it towards a customer, that is a stand rather than a case, and it is covered by our acrylic display stands and risers. Open or enclosed is the useful distinction, and most enquiries turn out to be clearly one or the other.

Acrylic boxes are the most-asked-for item here and the most varied. Five-sided boxes with a separate lid, hinged boxes, boxes with a slot cut in the top, boxes with a printed base, boxes sized to hold one specific object. There is no standard range: you tell us the internal dimensions and the thickness, or send us the object, and we cut and bond to that. Small quantities are normal and there is no minimum order.

Display cases are the same construction doing a different job. A case over a model, a piece of memorabilia, a scale prototype or a museum exhibit keeps dust and fingers off it while leaving it visible from every side. Collectors are the most frequent buyers here: figurine display cases and figure display boxes, minifigure and model kit cases, trading card and coin cases, die-cast and model car cases, and trophy display cases, each sized to the piece rather than bought off a shelf. These are usually made as a five-sided cover sitting on a base, so the exhibit can be reached without dismantling anything, and the base can be acrylic, timber-faced or mirrored depending on how the piece should read.

Display cabinets are the wall-mounted, functional end: key cabinets, card and pass holders, first aid and safety equipment enclosures, spare parts. These are the ones most often specified with a lock, and with a clear front so the contents can be checked at a glance without opening the door.

Donation boxes, collection boxes and suggestion boxes are the same five-sided construction with a slot cut in the top, and a lock where the contents need protecting. Offices, charities, events and building lobbies are where they come up most, and the box usually carries printed or engraved branding on the front so it reads as yours rather than as a generic container.

Ballot boxes, voting boxes, lucky draw boxes and raffle boxes are the same box built for a single occasion. Clear acrylic is the usual choice where the process has to be seen to be open, and a solid colour where it should not be. The slot is cut to whatever is going into it, from a folded ballot paper to a business card. Tell us the slot size, whether it needs a lock, and how the box should be branded, and we will make it to those.

Trays and drawer inserts are for workshops and laboratories where things have to sit in fixed compartments, cut to the compartment sizes you specify.

A question worth settling early is acrylic against glass. Acrylic is roughly half the weight, does not shatter into fragments if it is knocked off a wall or a counter, and can be cut, drilled and bonded to shapes glass cannot easily take. Glass resists scratching better and stays optically clear for longer under heavy cleaning. We work in acrylic and polycarbonate, so if a job genuinely calls for glass we will say so rather than talk you into the wrong material.

Clear is the default. Coloured, frosted and mirrored acrylic are all available, and polycarbonate is the option where an enclosure sits somewhere it is likely to be knocked, since it takes an impact that would crack acrylic.

Acrylic or polycarbonate

Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). You will also see it sold as Perspex, Lucite or Plexiglas. Those are trade names for the same material, so a perspex display case and an acrylic display case are the same thing. Specific gravity 1.19, roughly half the weight of glass for the same panel, and it absorbs 0.3% water over 24 hours, so it is dimensionally stable indoors. Its heat distortion temperature is 80°C, which is the figure that matters if an enclosure will sit against a window in full sun, near a heater, or over equipment that runs warm. Where a case is likely to be knocked rather than merely warm, polycarbonate is the swap.

Cleaning: never use acetone or an ammonia-based glass cleaner. This is the question we are asked after delivery rather than before, so it is worth stating up front. Acrylic dissolves at room temperature in acetone, chloroform, benzene, toluene and xylene, and it is only stable in aqueous ammonia up to 18%, which is why household glass sprays craze the surface. It resists sulfuric acid to 60%, caustic soda to 50% and hydrochloric acid to 30% at 60°C, so ordinary industrial splashes are not the problem; solvents are. Warm water, a drop of mild detergent and a soft cloth is the whole method.

Thickness is chosen for the span rather than picked from a list: a large lid needs more than a small one, and we will tell you what a given size wants.

Where these cases are used. The same construction serves several rooms. In museums and galleries an acrylic case goes over an exhibit on a plinth or a tabletop, keeping dust and hands off it while staying invisible enough that the object is still the thing you look at. In retail it protects the one item on the counter that walks if it is left loose. Collectors use them over models, scale prototypes, figures and memorabilia, and offices over awards and presentation pieces. An acrylic showcase, an acrylic display case and a display cabinet are the same family here; the difference is the size and whether it locks.

We do not work glass. Everything on this page is acrylic or polycarbonate. If your specification calls for a sealed glass museum showcase with controlled conditions, that is a different trade and we will say so rather than sell you the wrong thing. For an acrylic case over an exhibit, a product or a model, this is exactly what we make.

Send dimensions, a sketch, a drawing or a photograph of the thing that has to fit inside, and we will quote against it. Everything is fabricated in our own workshop in Singapore, and our in-house graphic designers can set out printed or engraved branding on the piece if you want it.

Where a case or cabinet carries engraved or printed identification rather than plain branding, that lettering is produced as our custom nameplates in metal or acrylic, so the plaque on the case matches the rest of the scheme.