Reply 30660 of 30664, by BitWrangler
- Rank
- l33t++
GigAHerZ wrote on Today, 15:06:Found these products with the help of AI - i asked for ingredients, searched what is locally available, and then described the i […]
GigAHerZ wrote on Yesterday, 15:02:...
I now need to go to find some things to weld back all other plastic clips that have broken off - the back case has nothing to hold on to. Thankfully i have all the broken pieces. Found some local products with the help of AI to actually weld and recreate ABS plastic. I hope i don't have to just glue the backside onto the monitor somehow...
...Found these products with the help of AI - i asked for ingredients, searched what is locally available, and then described the ingredients of the products to the AI to confirm if these are the right tools for the job.
Just applied these products on some plastic pieces.
The yellow product is like water, but it makes the Compaq's plastic a bit smeary-pastey on the surface it was applied after 10-15 seconds. (I used cotton swab) Applied it to the both sides of the break.
Then i took the red bottle. This is thicker, like some rubber-glue. Applied a thin coat on one piece on the broken surface.
Then pushed the pieces together and as AI predicted, I could even see some plastic slightly bulging out as it was soft. (I hope I still am in the margin of error for the measurements 😀 )
Now i have to wait at least 24h before I could apply a second coat of the red one to build a bit more material on the pieces.
But so far it's promising - I've never had myself any chemistry that could "melt" the original plastics. I hope it works.It would be amazing, if at last, i have some sort of procedure and approach to repairing plastics once and for all. I already have 2-part epoxy to create "hard rock, concrete" in places where i have room and don't need any flexibility. (Think of laptop's display hinge screw posts) I really-really hope i have found "the way" now for slightly flexible plastics.
In summary:
Yellow Arrow 901 - Used only initially to soften the original plastics.
Red Arrow 1108 - Used initially as well as later to build additional material. After the first steps, some tiny cracks may appear in plastic - these can also be filled with this 1108 after 24+h.The original usage for those products is to "glue" together PVC piping for hot and cold water.
Well I hope the melting part did the trick because thanks to AI you're probably trying to rebuild ABS plastic with PVC with the other one, which might just flake off.
If you want to do it with ABS, normally you'd want to use acetone and methyl ethyl ketone, and make a filler with a grated lego brick or scrap drive covers, or odds and ends of ABS 3D printer filament grated up in MEK and left to melt and stirred up a lot. But this is also a significant fire hazard and risk of intoxication without good ventilation.
However, I didn't mention this before as you probably have brittle plastic from age and high stress and bend parts like clips will probably just break again, if not where you welded it, then somewhere near. So I thought you needed a better solution, or needed to brace with metal somewhere.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.