I used this cool liquid plastic welding material to repair a broken butter tray door

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That may actually come in handy on the freezer shelf that gave way under the weight of too much butter recently. Thanks!

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Cyber-glue! I fixed ours with pound shop epoxy and masking tape. It is even less pretty.

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Amazing! But when our icemaker’s plastic cube-detector gizmo broke, I fashioned a mending support block from wood. More material means less chance of the same fracture repeating in the future.

After all, you are not bound by the lowest-cost-of-materials limitation that the manufacturer is operating under.

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Another material worth attention is epoxy putty.

But this one is neat. I should maybe get some.

(Also, consider using those violet 404nm laser pointers for curing. Much more energy in much smaller area, higher-precision work is possible. And I think there are laser diodes that integrate red and blue chip in one package, so a red pilot beam could be possible, to know where the violet one will be applied.)

I wonder how it’d work for photolithography printing (and, by extension, how would the 3d printing photoresin work as a glue/conformal coating).

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I tried that but curing time and having the freezer door open doesn’t work too well. :frowning:

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Another trick for joining broken plastics is a soldering iron with a blunt or blade tip and a metal mesh (the kind that goes into windows against insects will do the job well). Place the mesh over the broken area, then press it into the plastic (melt and sink it in) with the iron tip.

Also works well for making mesh covers over holes cut into plastics. Additional airflow holes cut into laptops work well that way; the CPU fan then can suck air through a large hole on the top side instead of relying on those little puny cutouts in the bottom that get clogged with a blanket when one works from bed.

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3D printing hasn’t reached the stage where a clear plastic door could be reliably reproduced, has it? I reckon all the layering would diffract too much light.

Why does it have to be clear, anyway? Would translucent, partially transparent, do?

…and in any case, we can 3d-print the sides and then use a laser-cut acrylic sheet in the front, if the optical-grade transparency is that much important.

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I swear he must walk around breaking things just so he can fix them. This place is a hardware store!

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Be aware that the curing light may be pretty bad for your eyes.

Dentists started getting increased incidence of cataracts when UV-cured resins were introduced to dentistry. Now they use special glasses and (if they are responsible physicians) they tell their patients to keep their eyes shut during curing to avoid any accidental reflections.

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Iʻve used a lighter and a stick of hotmelt glue to do repairs like this for 30+ years. A small piece glued to the lighter is a pocketable use-anywhere tool.

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Although I am a sucker for anything like this, I’m struggling to see what niche it fills. If a tray in my fridge broke (and I had all the pieces), I’d use this, which is also sold as “plastic weld”, but is really just plain old farmhouse-style dimethyl sulfoxide. You hold the parts together, add a drop or two to the joint, count to five and you’re done. It’s pretty much invisible, even when you use it on transparent acrylic (it works on acrylic, styrene and ABS). However, as it literally is welding rather than gluing, it doesn’t work on other materials and it needs perfect contact between the parts. But of course, when you break something brittle, the edges will always mate perfectly.

As my grandmother used to say, as long as you have CA, PVA, impact cement, organic solvents, a hot glue gun, duct tape and a MIG welder, you can stick anything.

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Bondic is designed to only cure at a specific wavelength.

A range of wavelengths, actually, with efficiency matching the absorption spectrum of the photoactivator.

The hardening gadget uses an “ultraviolet” LED. These are usually at 400-405 nm, which matches the 404 nm of the violet laser diodes pretty well.

There are LEDs with shorter wavelengths but they are getting more expensive the shorter the wavelength is. It’s more economical for the manufacturer to match the resin to the LED.

You just answered your own question. Bondic can fill gaps. I used it to repair a resin watchband, where the material between two of the buckle holes had worn through. I was able to fill in the gap, and keep using the watch. That was two years ago, and I wear the watch every day.

No, not according to the company. It requires a specific wavelength. If you want to disagree, write the company.

I have an SLA 3D printer so always have plenty of UV cured resin. I’ve tried to use it as glue before, but apart from sticking other 3D printed parts together it’s never worked that well. Nasty stuff to handle too. Bondic is probably a different formulation though so I’d think it works better.

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SLA printers (which is also UV cured resin) can print transparent parts that are properly clear. The surface usually starts off as dull (a bit like frosted glass) but can be polished or varnished to make them glossy. Formlabs have even managed to print a working lens with their printers

Super glue wouldn’t suffice?

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