Just bought a Plastic Welding kit from HF. I also have a speed controller that was recommended in this news group (over a year ago) to use with the welder. Anyway, I have to do some mending on the plastic shroud that hangs from the front bumper of my Mazda pickup. Mainly, I have to fill in 'bolt hole' areas that have been torn free.
Any pointers on using this thing other than 'practice, practice, practice'.
Thanks, Ivan Vegvary
When you find out..let us know. The front grill (plastic) on my Mazda B3000 is cracked in a number of places due to summer sun and having
419,000 miles on it. Id like to fix it up a bit.Gunner
Political Correctness
A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.
That's about it. Read up on it a bit-the methods used may not be what you first would think. Essentially you will be pushing the rod down and forward. When it's done right the rod will have a slight bead on each side of it....
Plastic welding is a good option when the plastics you are dealing with are not solvent bondable or adhesive bondable. For everything else there is usually a better way.
I suspect that a bumper cover on a Mazda is some sort of urethane, and you can probably glue it easier than welding. Check with a body shop supply place and they probably have some stuff that will work. If you can't find the information, I would suggest going to a junk your and getting some scrap off another Mazda (careful some are Jap origin, some are rebaged Ford products.) and play with different solvents and epoxies to see if you can get a good bond. If you find a solvent, you can make an interesting glue out of chips of the base materiel and the solvent if you need to fill gaps. This is a slow process but done carefully, will yield excellent results.
I agree. Glue it!
The grill on my 86 B2000 (which had to be completely removed to change a headlight) was a little worse for wear after, among other things, hitting a deer.
A 1 oz bottle of super glue from a hobby shop, some light fiberglass cloth, and some baking soda for filler, and it held up for several years, until I found one at a price I was willing to pay at a U-pick wrecking yard.
Even if the plastic is weldable, you are going to make a mess of the finish that will dictate a bunch of work sanding and painting. With the broken bits glued, you have to look really close to see the join lines.
Save the plastic welding for big flat(ish) panel type areas.
Cheers Trevor Jones
I don't know much about welding plastic but here's my two cents for what it is worth.
Years ago, we used to boil the nylon propellers from our model airplanes. This was because the plastic would get brittle with age and boiling the plastic softened it up again. Our boiled propellers could handle much more abuse than the non-boiled old props.
I suppose you could compare welding plastic to welding aluminum in a sense. Most materials will weld much better when you get them closer to the temperature that you will be welding them at.
"So, my advice, short and sweet is to try to preheat your material prior to welding it." In the case of a plastic bumper, try to heat it up with a hair dryer prior to welding it. Once you've made your weld, it will probably look pretty rough.
While the plastic is still sort of soft, try planing it smooth with a rigid ribbed body file.
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