Any tips for a novice ?

I want maybe 30" worth of seam welding, is it a DIY job, cut it and take it somewhere or knock summat up to do it ?

Any advice welcome.

Try Weldspek at Boughton nr Ollerton, did an excellent job for me on a motorcycle fairing.
Rgds.
Pete.

What type of plastic?

If PVC then you can mix plastic shavings with solvent and bond it.
Plumbers use a solvent based adhesive such as Ega Weld for piping that actually cold welds joints.

Welders at ICI, when I was there, used gas powered hot air guns to weld plastics.
Basically a coil of 6mm copper pipe with a gas jet in the middle, fed from an air line. Air heats in coil and melts plastic. They used a plastic filler rod. Not totally molten though, just soft enough to bond.

Edited because it's past my bed time and I made a load of spelling mistakes.

[Edited on 9/12/07 by Confused but excited.]

What sort of plastic?
Tensol solvent cement does a variety of jobs with acrylic etc, other stuff can be melted eg ABS
Is it in an area where you are l kely to see the join everyday?
How strong does it need to be?
A few more clues might help toguess the right answers!

Can't you do it with a glue gun Jon? You can get hot melt glue in different grades and setting speeds as well as black or clear.

what material is it?

if you can cut a 3mm x 3mm strip of the plastic off then chamfer the edges you want to join.
Use a paint stripper with a tapered nozzle on, you'll have to experiment with the heat but you'll need about 230 degrees C roughly.

start to warm up the area you are going to fill with the strip as you do this place the tip of the strip at the start and slowly press the strip in to the chamfer, you want to try to warm the strip and chamfer evenly as you go.

I hope this helps, it's quite hard to explain but when you get the hang of it very easy to do.

Let me know if you want to know more, by the way plastic fabrication is my job

jon
didn't MK have plastic welding gear after whats his name left (the one who made the tanks)
tony