MakerGear Forum

I was at a hardware store today, and picked up a Dremel chuck. Decided to give friction welding a go (http://makezine.com/projects/make-34/sk ... d-objects/). Printed two plates in PLA with a beveled channel at the mating face and had at it.

It's rather tricky. The "welding rod" has a tendency to want to walk everywhere until the tip starts melting, at which point it settles down. The resulting weld is pretty strong, but messy. You can see photos of it in that article. It would take quite some work and care to sand it down sufficiently. Ultimately, other than for situations where you need some serious gap filling, or need to join two dissimilar plastics that don't have a solvent in common, I don't think this technique is superior in any way to solvent bonding.

I tried it too, a few weeks ago, and found it difficult not to leave a shallow hole behind. Otherwise, the weld seemed to be pretty good. I was working on a small part with small details (the knight in my chess set. . . I had printed with eSUN bronze with too low an infill and it made the piece very brittle, and it cracked along a layer line at the weakest point), so the hole had to be patched up. It would work better on larger pieces, but I think that some finishing work is inevitable. Maybe I just need to get the technique down better. But I agree, solvent bonding has got to be the better way.

wow, i remember when i was a kid, they had model kits you could build that you assembled using friction welding called spinwelder, came with a motor and a "welding rods" which basically pushed onto a motor shaft. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA

Ive had great success with friction welding. I use it a lot on my students projects and they never even realize

When you get the molten blob going, keep moving it. the old welder saying is "can you push a puddle?"

afterwards i hit it with the conical sanding bit that came with my dremel, a light and quick run around will help de-burr (i know they're not burrs) the model and usually makes the seam....seamless.

innkeeper wrote:wow, i remember when i was a kid, they had model kits you could build that you assembled using friction welding called spinwelder, came with a motor and a "welding rods" which basically pushed onto a motor shaft. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnWpcwnR2YA

What the hell. That thing is awesome ... why do they not sell this anymore?

Because it doesn't have a touch screen

there are 3 diffrent plastic welders sold my harbor freight. http://www.harborfreight.com/welding/pl ... lders.html

There is a video on youtube where a guy prints a "glue stick" out of PLA, put it into a hot glue gun, and does plastic welding with it.

I have yet to try, but I think it could work nicely. The best I have done is, moving the fans out of the way and extruding some PLA into the place I need to fill and smashing down with a metal tool.