Solvent-Welding Plastics

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Solvent-Welding Plastics

Dan Strohl of custom car site Hemmings.com wrote a great piece on solvent-welding plastics: basically gluing together broken pieces of plastic with a solvent chosen to work best with that type of plastic.

Step one is identifying the plastic. Thereโ€™s all sorts of plastics out there, and they all respond to different solvents. Urethane Supply Company has a pretty comprehensive guide to identifying plastics, should the piece youโ€™re repairing not have any identification marks on it. Plastic interior trim is more likely than not to be some sort of polyethylene, such as HDPE. Once youโ€™ve identified the type of plastic, round up some scrap plastic of the same type. Fortunately, I had another broken piece of interior trim from the same car in the same nutmeg color.

Thanks, Dan!

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My interests include writing, electronics, RPGs, scifi, hackers & hackerspaces, 3D printing, building sets & toys. @johnbaichtal nerdage.net

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