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Thread: Plastic welders

  1. #1
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    Default Plastic welders

    Does anyone have any experience with plastic welder and welding plastic?

    More and more these days I am having to deal with plastic, everything from water tanks, piping, vehicles and I have found I can even buy polythene in sheet form, which can be fabricated into bits and pieces...

    As such am looking at getting a tool that welds plastic... Can anyone offer any advice on these tools?
    Light red, the colour of choice for the discerning man.

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  3. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by .RC. View Post
    Does anyone have any experience with plastic welder and welding plastic?

    More and more these days I am having to deal with plastic, everything from water tanks, piping, vehicles and I have found I can even buy polythene in sheet form, which can be fabricated into bits and pieces...

    As such am looking at getting a tool that welds plastic... Can anyone offer any advice on these tools?
    I've been paying a man in Hobart to do mine, but he's so slow getting the jobs done that I've been having the same thought myself.

    From what I've seen it doesn't look particularly difficult, but nor does TIG welding 1.2mm aluminium, if you watch one of my ex-staff do it.....

    PDW

  4. #3
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    There was a time that hot air welding was a subject at school, so I have a bit of experience though i would not say it is extensive .
    The process is basically that the parent materials butt up to each other and are heated by an electric powered hot air gun which is basically a hair drier on steroids.It has a stepped down nozzle to direct the hot air flow into the joint.

    The edges become plastic and a filler stick is placed at the junction of the join and folded into the work.Filler is fed vertically and bends at a right angle by the heat to follow the seam horizontally.

    There is a bit of technique needed to keep the temperature between that of too cold and BBQ charcoal state,so that the filler is introduced at just the right temperature so it bonds to the parent materials. By far the best gun is a Leister.

    Going with a cheap rrsed chinese version will only serve to compound what ever difficulties you will have in the learning phase.
    I am sure there will be plenty of experts on U tube and probably with up to date equipment as well.

    Grahame

  5. #4
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    I weld plastics quite often using a soldering iron. Butt your material up and use a filler rod of the same material. I fixed my welding helmet twice now (different spots) using the soldering iron and a ziptie (Nylon). Also done some scooter body repairs with abs.

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    Like Grahame said Richard.
    Pity I didn't live closer.
    It's easy peasy with a lot of practice.

    Phil

  7. #6
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    I've done a fair bit in my time (PE, HDPE, HPPP and PVC) but the last big job I did was this ultra clean metal free laboratory in 1986.

    You need a hot air gun with a fine nozzle to do a neat job. I used a Leister to do this job.
    Plastic welders-cleanx-jpg

    I started out cutting strips of material to use as a filler rod but if you have a lot to do it really is worth buying the special filler rod roll. It melts at a slightly higher temperature than the material so you can force it into the weld - a lot of generic metal welding techniques apply and all it takes is a bit of practice.

    As well as welding I also did a lot of bending. Initially bending ended up buckling and warping a heap of sheets so I preferred to weld but after a while I got good enough at bending that I preferred to bend rather than weld, especially if air tightness was required. Our bending improved markedly after we made a water cooled bender that allowed just the bend/joint to be heated without heating up the rest of the sheet. We used 1.2m long electric oven elements set in between two rectangular ally tubes which had water going through them. The elements were controlled with a variac (not allowed these days) but some other method could be used.
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    Thanks, the wealth of information here is amazing... I actually never expected any replies as I cannot recall plastic welding coming up before... So I assumed no one did it...
    Light red, the colour of choice for the discerning man.

  9. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by .RC. View Post
    So I assumed no one did it...
    I tried welding plastic once. Buggered if I could get the electrode to strike. And the earth clamp wasn't much better.

  10. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by .RC. View Post
    Thanks, the wealth of information here is amazing... I actually never expected any replies as I cannot recall plastic welding coming up before... So I assumed no one did it...

    Never underestimate the talent available here (not from me but so many others have it)
    Regards
    Bradford

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    I have ordered a Leister Triac.... The price was much less then I was expecting... This was from the importer...
    Light red, the colour of choice for the discerning man.

  12. #11
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    I just picked up a PVC tank I'd had made by a plastic fab place up town. Asked the owner what it cost for a decent setup, he said the gun he uses is around $500. I didn't ask what the brand was.

    He can do my work faster and has all the stocks of material on hand so I'm not sure if it's worth the bother tooling up, myself. At this point I only need 3 tanks welded, and he's already done 2 of them. The slack builder hasn't made the pattern for tank number 3 yet...

    PDW

  13. #12
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    Hi RC

    just so you know every plastic welds differently abs if you get it to hot goes oily and wont weld pvc just burns
    best tip i can give is let the gun heat up to temp for about 3 min before you start to weld
    on my leister i run on about 6 for pvc
    i have done a lot of pvc tanks for work
    and for hard abs plastics for motorbike fairings (dont ask why ive had to weld quite a few of them ) I found that the abs rods where never as strong as the original plastic and always broke out on the welds
    now here's my secret trick to fix that (dont tell any one will you) i use pvc rods on the hard abs
    i have had one of my repairs put to the test in a crash that totaled the bike but all the breaks in the fairings where through new plastic no weld broke
    hope this helps you out its a pretty handy skill to have that's for sure

    cheers
    Harty

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