Plastic welders

[msafi65]

Just wondering what type of plastic welders are anyone using? Pros, cons , price and availability of supplies would greatly appreciated. I've used a small electric one from urethane supply quite a bit but not very pleased with results. Thanks

[JohnF]

I have the cheapy from harbor freight and it works okay on some things but on the HDPE argo body I like an old soldering iron because I can add a lot of pressure with the heat.

[amphibious drew]

I have the cheapo HF unit as well and it's ok, but I too prefer the old soldering gun. I also use an old travel clothes iron with no regulator to smooth things out nicely.

[msafi65]

Thanks, I kind of figured the harbor freight one would come up. I've been looking at something with at least one speed tip that passes filler rod through it.

[amphibious drew]

I've never used a spool type plastic welder. I'm sure the better ones work great, but the nice thing about a soldering gun is that you can use any scrap material you have to make rod instead of buying it. This is great for when you are platic welding a colored section and you want a perfect match.

[jeffery9076]

I used a wegener welder for 1 attex body a few pieces very expensive machine $1600 when I worked at a plastic place. First you run a tack after cleaning the plastic we used MEK. Then you would flip the tip down to run rod thru. I got one from ebay $75 dollars thought element was burned out ordered element $75 was not element. A mother board is $450 which is what is bad had some wires that had coating off inside.
I have welded different plastic but the abs seemed like it wanted to try to smear in the crack. Probably my fault I had 1/8" abs rod and a 1/4" tip and was not feeding the rod at the right temp my guess because of not enough heat because of lack of contact with the welder. The wegener autotherm uses air to push the heat onto the plastic to preheat for welding and tacking. The elements can break if you drop them to much or forget to leave the air run after you shut the welder off . Element burns up. It should always have air running while on and until it cools' The welds all held good so far

[Mike]

A year or so ago I was in need of a plastic welder to build an HDPE fresh air intake for my Avenger with the T20 transplant. Like you, I was looking for a welder with a high speed tip. I spent a good bit of time researching them and came to realize that there are really cheap welders and really expensive ones without many options in between. I had myself almost talked into a Techspan welder but I just couldn't justify the price for the little that I needed to use it for so I ended up with a knockoff version like this one Hot Air Torch Plastic Welding Gun Welder Pistol 1500W 2pcs Speed Nozzle Roller | eBay

I practiced for a while and finally got to where I was comfortable with the welds. With these welds, I could butt weld two pieces of HDPE at a 90 degree angle to one another and the following day when it had cooled, I could bend those two pieces of plastic and the weld would never come loose. The HDPE would actually break next to the weld before the weld broke.

Here is the welder I ended up with along with some of the HDPE I had cut to weld:


Here is the high-speed tip laying down a bead:


Here is the bead:


Here is the finished product:


I learned that the keys to a good weld are:
- Have a clean surface
- Get the right heat setting for the material you are welding
- Tack the material together first
- Let the bead lay itself down. It will almost push the welder along for you.

If you haven't see this video, it really helps you to see the proper way to weld. If you tack the HDPE together and then go back and weld, you can get really good results.

[Nubs]

Cool

[Twizted1]

That would come in handy in more than just this hobby. Very cool tool.

[msafi65]

Thanks for input. Mike I did see that video and that's where I got the idea that I should have speed tips. Think I'll end up with one like on eBay. Really strange these things are priced from $60 to 6K.