Most of the strip curtains I’ve seen are in industrial settings so maybe longer and thicker that the ones for coolers. Grainger has rolls of replacement srips that are 16 inches wide and 0.16 inches thick. Maybe OP has some flexibility on the dims? It’s unfortunately a 100 foot roll for $776. You could call around commercial door places to see if they’ll sell a smaller chunk.
We had some on the loading dock at our old building and you had to be careful when it was windy. They’d flap around unpredictably and could probably knock out a tooth if you caught one in the mouth. It was also creepy when the door was closed since it sounded like someone outside pounding on it.
That was just a random picture I found. Most places that sell it, will sell it at all different lengths (many people are just replacing a few strips). Also, the prices vary wildly from one place to the next, but IME, many of them are selling the exact same thing (even using identical sell sheets, calculators, pictures etc).
Those are corrugated panels. The thin ones can be rolled into a tube or other shapes in one direction, or crimped and folded the other way. Very useful and sturdy stuff.
I wondered about welding curtain material but it seem a lot thinner than I thought (like 0.01 inch) for something that’s supposed to stop sparks and blobs from going too far. It’s also tinted which might not work for OP.
The welding curtains, I think, are more about blocking the UV rays than anything else. They don’t need to be all that thick to stop sparks, they just need to not catch on fire or melt.
Are you looking at the striations in the thumbnail images and seeing corrugation? I perceive those as cut marks on two edges of a flat slab. The item description at the linked site does not mention corrugation, although it was previously pointed out that those PVC slabs are rigid, not flexible as the OP requires.
I should add that I’ve noticed another scrap is about 8 inches wide and is finished on three sides, which lends further credence to the idea that these were former panels of a door curtain. I also spoke to someone at TMI who said they used to produce a .275 thick PVC panel, which may well be exactly what this is. As it is, they only produce panels up to .240 thick now, so I may just have to be satisfied with that. I’m currently waiting on word of a local dealer to see what they can provide.
How much clarity do these need? If the thickness and/or their ability to stop shrapnel is more important than being able to see through them, it might be easier to get whatever thickness is available but double/triple them up until they’re as thick as you need them to be.
Sorry about that. I’m on my phone and the image was fooling me until I magnified it. I have to practice the SDMB app, never did this stuff on the phone before.
That is great that you talked with TMI. Another option to consider is to glue (weld) two or more sheets to get the desired thickness. It takes some dexterity to do the gluing
Could you give us some insight on the project for which this heavy flexible vinyl is needed? Will it be an automated cat washer with a vinyl observation window? Gotta be sturdy so the cat can’t escape. I bet I’m right, huh?
A while back I got an old industrial washer control panel from work and I was wondering what to do with it. I enjoy old video games and tinkering so eventually what I ended up doing was building my own MiSTer, which is an open-hardware project geared toward simulating old game hardware as accurately as possible.
As you can see in that link there’s a big open window where the control panel buttons used to be, which I filled in with a clear corrugated plastic sheet. The plastic sheet is nice, because it lets me stick little pins in it, which is nice because my wife can buy me a new pin whenever she wants to get me a gift. The corrugated plastic is nice, but it’s pretty flimsy. You know what would be better? That’s right, a nice thick sheet of transparent vinyl, about 16-18 inches square.
So you need a material that is stiff enough to not sag into the opening, but soft enough to stick pins in? Or possibly use 3mm vinyl (for accepting pins) over tempered glass (for structural strength), like the glass tabletops with a clear vinyl pad on top?
Most of what I know about welding curtains, I learned today in composing replies to this thread but the description suggests they’re for more than harmful light (which they also are needed for):
Welding blankets, curtains, and screens keep spatter and sparks contained to prevent fires and damage. They are made materials that resist flames and withstand heat generated by welding equipment. Welding blankets drape over surfaces and equipment to provide a protective shield. Weld curtains and screens form barriers to enclose hot work zones.
The curtains use the curious term ‘protective thickness.’ I wonder if that’s an industry term that means something other than how thick the curtain material is. They always seemed pretty thick to me back when I was visiting more industrial places.
To be fair, most of what I know about strip curtain style welding curtains I learned a few years back, over the course of a few days, as an incidental part of replacing strip curtains on a walk-in cooler. And it was mostly forgotten since then.
Welding blankets, OTOH, I learned about when I was teaching myself about welding. Harbor Freight sells them, but as someone that can not handle anything made of fiberglass, these blankets didn’t seem like anything I wanted to be around. Upon reading up on them, I saw a few people mentioning that they would actually wear more protective gear to handle the fiberglass blankets than for welding.
I’ll never understand how some people can handle fiberglass like it’s nothing. I know my skin isn’t rough and callused but I swear just being in the same vicinity as some yellow insulation or a fiberglass ladder that’s starting to shed after spending it’s life strapped to the roof of a truck and I’ll somehow manage to end up with some of that fiberglass in my skin.