Anyone here melt HDPE plastic they save and cut up?
I made these two blobs just to see if I could hand press the shit flat enough. I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. Maybe carve them it something. I need to build a brick making clamp or hydrolic press though.
This was more a proof of concept after some YouTube videos I watched.
Left is milk jugs and dish soap bottle with some grocery bags, right is all grocery bags.
Both of them are comical in how stuff and hard they are. Grocery bag blob has some air bubbles but it's still like tapping on hard wood.
>>935763
I'm thinking they would make cool stepping stones or if sunk into a bit of concrete a cool walk way in blob form. I would have to stipple the surface a but with a soldering iron though as the surface is pretty fucking slick.
Main goal is maybe a knife handle eventually and then to try and build bricks of the shit to have a wall in a shed be made of it or a door.
>>935763
Bump
>>935763
dildos obviously
>>935763
Lamp shades clearly... Hell op if you can make them thin enough for defusing the light lamp shades would be pretty neat.
Fyi. The white target bags. The red lettering and decals come off with either denatured alcohol or acetone.. Cant remember what one I used. Found this out by using the bags as a drop cloth for some painting I was doing. But I use both of those while I paint so I don't remember what one causes the red to bleed off.
>>935763
By
>>935763
>>935765
Made another blob
I'm interested in this, but I'm assuming not all plastic grocery bags are created equal.
I know some will disintegrate eventually if you leave them sitting out in the sun so they don't pose as much of an environmental hazard.
Do those work for this as well?
Or is there a way to tell them apart besides littering my yard with bags and harvesting the survivors?
>>936275
No it has to be HDPE plastic other stuff will fume off gasses or get too brittle without special industrial manufacture processes.
The HDPE is marked on the plastic. It's a little number 2 inside of a recycling triangle and may have the letters HDPE next to it.
YouTube it.
>>936275
https://youtu.be/W_XUJwINdLw
Watch this. You can identify hdpe plastic bags by the same markings
>>936282
I've heard that LDPE recycle type 4 bags work for this as well.
>>935763
This guy made a joiner's mallet out of HDPE. He used clamps on a wooden form that shouldn't be too hard to throw together if you've got a saw and a hammer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyP7YJ9O3TY
>>935763
What did you use to melt it?
>>936275
HDPE/LDPE both dislike sunlight. They will completely disintegrate in the sun over the course of a few years. Colored HDPE/LDPE fair better, black will last the longest and does very well in the sun. Black natural gas pipe is black HDPE and lasts decades in the sun. White is the worst as it will become brittle in about a year or two.
>>936320
Awesome.
>>936341
Oven and a Pyrex dish with parchment paper so it didn't stick. You can also use an iron to squish the back down
just my idea slapped in paint
>>936399
just curious will this work?
>>936320
I'm really liking that guy's youtube channel. I like the way he just experiments like that.
>>936399
>>936415
Yes, to a small extent that should work. It is essentially a plastic injection system. It'd be easy enough to test, just go to any thrift shop or antique store and buy a $10-$20 hand crank Food Chopper or even a meat grinder. Anything with an auger like that. You would probable need to put a heat shield over the unit and use a heat gun to blow hot air between the shield and grinder.
>>936399
You'll need to keep the mold the same temperature as the grinder.
>>936399
Depends on the mould. You need some serious pressure to force HDPE into a two part mould.
Even the shittest lever operated manual machine delivers over 2000 psi.
>tl:dr Compression or Injection Moulding is what you want.
>>936399
>>936415
I'm the op who made the thread. You would need like a hydro press or pneumatic press to force the plasitc. The shit is very gummy and doesn't flown like a liquid at reasonable home temps. Would be much easier to use vice grips or clamps and clamp it into a box and then grind down the cube shape you get into what you want
IIRC, HDPE is the same material as the black thick wall pipe. I have a few fragments of that, from a big fiber laying project. HDPE tubing is also used by fireworks enthusiasts because, should the rockets explode prematurely, the HDPE will deform rather than shatter. It makes great launching tubes.
>>936341
I have never ever seen plastic gas pipe. Where is this a thing?
>>937158
Ocean pipeline sometimes. They tow huge plastic pipe put to oil and gas rigs because the capped pipe floats behind the tugboat. A lot cheaper than metal for some applications
>>937158
Just about every place that has natural gas wells (all the shitty low income parts of the USA where lobbyists can easily get their way). They will lay it right on the ground too. Just leave it like that for a decade of more until it breaks. Then they just roll out another.
I use it for making garden hoops for growing vegetables.
A few prospective projects I've had bouncing around in my head involve working with HDPE (though more along the lines of vacuum-forming and welding).
>>937342
Start cutting up milk jugs mate
>>935960
light polarized by melted HDPE is amazing so i hear
>>936387
i dont recommend
pyrex. i did it and layers of glass got stuck to my HDPE concentrate. my wife was so mad lol. use parchment paper
>>937205
ocean pipelines are a huge market for plastic (HDPE) pipes
>>936341
Correct. The dopants used in the HDPE dyes vary the disintegration rate of the plasic.
Is there any practical method to bonding HDPE other than welding? Nothing seems to stick to it.
>>937376
That's a main reason it's used mate. It not having shir not stick to it is important.
