ABS
Plastic Forming page.
First off, what about using Mom's kitchen
tools for forming plastic?
I get asked
about his quite a bit- everybody has a kitchen stove, and some
have wondered: Can this thing help me make parts?
The answer: NO. Kitchen stoves are
designed for the heating and cooking of things that are safe
to consume and SMELL, i.e., Steak Tri-tips, chocolate cakes,
etc. that being said, I've used my trusty Amana for
worse...
Heating PLASTIC in your home immediately
sets up DANGEROUS conditions.
MOST plastics "out-gas" when heated,
releasing volatile fumes, corrosive agents, not the building
blocks of life. Sometimes, the mixtures can be deadly! A lot
of plastics (thermosets) just won't melt or get soft, they'll
char and go to flames first.
Like most Thermo[b]plastics[/b], once
MELTED, ABS will puddle and bubble, and then spectacularly
burst into sticky flames. Yes, Mom would be mad.
So DON'T DO THIS yourself. Consider this
information on how I play with fire, nothing more.
Most of what you need to know about
ABS:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abs_plastic
Buried in this info (actually in a link)
is the "heat deflection temp" for ABS plastic. It's 185
degrees Fahrenheit. that means, at a uniform temp of 185, it
can be deflected. Fancy way of saying
"bent".
But you don't really want to fully heat a
sheet, just bend it to your will.
This is an electric bending strip. Made
of a teflon/fiberglass mesh, with a heating element woven into
it.
http://www.interstateplastics.com
has these in different lengths, this is a
24
Making STRAIGHT bends is much easier if
there is a groove routed into the backside of the bend. It
just takes a bit longer to heat through without, and a bit
more care is required to get the bend positioned correctly,
and be straight.
Depending thickness, time will vary for
getting the plastic to the right temp. Note the digital timer.
By putting it in count-up mode for the first bend, I
determined that 2.5 minutes were needed for full heating. Then
I just set up a count-down for the next parts, and was able to
carry the timer while I did other small tasks.
ABOVE ALL, you don't want to become
distracted and forget about plastic in-process.
The finished
bend.
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