Greetings! My name is Adam. I work in the advertising industry as a brand developer. I also teach surfing lessons and spend a lot of time volunteering with an animal hospital. When I was on a gap year, I took a job in a pen factory. Through that experience, I learned a great deal about how pens were made, but I also learned a lot about industrial work and manufacturing in general. In this blog, I plan to write about all aspects of these topics, and I hope that this information is interesting and informative to you. Please, grab a tea and start looking around. If you like my blogs, share them. Thanks.
Many amateur plastic welders may complain to plastic manufacturers after observing poor welds each time that they try to weld pieces of plastic. Such complaints may be motivated by a mistaken belief that the plastic was defectively manufactured. However, the problem may be due to the welder's understanding of how different aspects affect the welding of plastic. This article discusses three important parameters that may affect the quality of a plastic welding job. Use this information to improve your work by adjusting how you weld plastics.
Temperature
Temperature is a big influencer of the welding outcome when you are working with thermoplastics. Many manufacturers may give you general guidelines about the ideal temperature at which to weld their products. However, you should remember that guidelines, such as this one, might need to be tweaked in order to accommodate the prevailing conditions where your fabrication shop is located. For instance, you may need to increase the temperature at which you are welding if ambient the temperature is lower than the temperature envisaged by the manufacturer of the plastic. Otherwise, the welding temperature may be so low that the weld penetration will be inadequate to fuse the pieces of plastic together.
Pressure
The pressure exerted by a welding rod on the plastic may be too high or too low. The right pressure causes the base material (the plastic sheets, for example) to blend perfectly with the plastic fill material. The correct pressure when hand welding may only be mastered through repeated practice sessions.
Extrusion welding exerts pressure as the welding rod pushes against the welding shoe onto which the plastic materials have been anchored. Pressure can be increased or decreased by adjusting the amount of fill material between the weld shoe and the plastic material. Keep adjusting the pressure settings until you are satisfied with the quality of the weld.
Time
The final parameter that affects the quality of a weld in plastic products is the speed at which welding is done. If the speed is too high, the materials may not have ample time to fuse before they cool. If the speed is too low, the plastic may develop defects, such as air pockets, due to intermittent heating and cooling of the weld seam. Adjust the weld speed until you get the right balance between how soon the welding rod touches the weld seam and the rate at which the plastic cools once it has fused with the fill material.
As you can see, many imperfections in plastic weld joints or seams may result from your inadequate understanding of the parameters that affect plastic fabrication. Use the information above as a starting point to get clarification from plastic manufacturers regarding how you can improve the quality of your welds.
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