Interesting Plastic Repair Method

[fireant911]

This may be old news but I just recently came across this one night when I could not sleep and had a broken plastic cooling fan for my generator in hand. Granted, there are many materials (JBWeld Plastic Weld is one of the more popular methods) out there that bond to plastic when some sort of repair/fabrication is required but this one is quick and amazing simple: super glue and baking soda!

I have used this approach twice with great results. Simply add baking soda to the area needing material (I used duct tape to close off the bottom and sides). Next, saturate the baking soda with super glue. This almost immediately forms a hard plastic surface that can be drilled, machined, and/or sanded.

There are numerous videos on youtube demonstrating this simple, yet effective technique.

[herr_oberst]

cool! good to know!

[LEAKYSEALS951]

I'll share one from the vaults of my stupidity.
I put some pants in the washing machine.
I did not take some sheet metal screws out of the pockets of said pants.
The sheet metal screws got caught in the spinning part of the bottom, and the sharp edges cut through the non spinning plastic of the tub.
Water drenched the floor.
This was a NEW washing machine.
I researched the hell out of it- and the tub was some un-fixable/un-bondable plastic.

So I used a soldering iron and melted the tub back together- like welding.

It's worked like a champ for 3 plus years now.

[nota]

tryed super glue on a radiator hair line crack on a plastic top part

it did NOT stick

guess some plastic doesn't like super glue

[gshase]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slCMkvEfK_U
now I am a Believer.

[cstreit]

Superglue requires a porous binding substrate.

I'm sure this works as a filler, as in the video, but on a plastic surface I doubt it would make a good bonding agent.

[unclebilly]

Look at loctite Hysol 3030DP or 3M 8005... These will bond low energy surfaces including olefinic plastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene. Like superglue, these are polyacrylomide based epoxies.

[GH85Carrera]

At a former job we had several film processors. One of them developed a crack due to an impact from a careless employee. It was the grey plastic that feels soapy. No glue would even start to stick to it.

We had to search how to repair it. It had to be plastic welded. It was a neat process.

[1990C4S]

Anybody tried the UV curing adhesives?

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Polyester resin (surfboard repair kits) works wonders on a lot of things also. Super hard, sandable (with some effort) and impossible to detect afterwards if prepped / painted. I've used this on a few bumper cover cracks and other areas.