Beginners' Guide to Melting HDPE - How to Make a Recycled Plastic Pen

recycling time let's melt some plastic [Music] so we've been working with recycled plastic for a little while now and we feel like we've learned quite a lot along the way so we thought we'd put this video together to share some of our tips and tricks with you guys in case you want to have a go yourself so it's not all types of plastic you can use for this technique we're going to show you today the thing you want to be looking out for is HDPE well that's down for HDPE stands for high density polyethylene it's a really common available plastic to use for loads of stuff around the house and you should be able to find it pretty easily the reason we're using it for our projects is that it melts at a low temperature which means it doesn't give off any toxic fumes and it's really easy to out with so what we've found all milk bottles are made out of HDPE and that's opposed to bodies and lids and that's really good cuz that means you can get it in a whole variety of colors also things like condiments cleaning products and shampoos are often kept in HDPE bottles you might even find some HDPE lying around a workshop generally you want to avoid any type of plastic which is completely transparent you also want to avoid any plastic which is really glossy to ensure that you are never mixing different types of plastics together always check that the plastic you're using has the HDPE logo somewhere on it the logo you're looking for is the recycling triangle with a number two in the middle once it's been cast into a solid block it works really well for things like workshop mallets or even something to tenderize your meat you can't it's a really dense material so what's great for things like workshop carving mallets or even meat tenderizers we've also made things about phone stands and coasters as well as used it to customize I'll make enough it also turns really nicely so we've used it to make some of these recycled plastic pens what we're hoping to do with this video is give you the ultimate guide and how to work with HTTP and at the end we're going to show you how to make one of these pens so when collecting your plastic you wanna make sure the label has been completely removed as these can potentially burn in the press also you wanna make sure your plastic is washed and dried this will help prevent any bad smells bubbling up in your workshop as well as help ensure a good bond when it comes to pressing so the one thing you need to be completely aware of during this whole process is that your worst enemy is going to be air bubbles air bubbles in your final piece are going to be spots for potential weakness and if you're turning something as slender as a pen it could be something that completely fails your entire project therefore when processing your plastic you've got two options to choose from you could cut your pieces into longer strips and that's going to give you that awesome marbling effect or you could cut them into smaller pieces and that's going to prevent any air bubbles from building up there are ways to get rid of air bubbles if you choose to go to those longer strips such as twisting and folding the plastic but we'll come onto that later if you're just collecting lids however make sure they go top-down on the press so that you don't trap any air underneath as we mentioned earlier HDPE melts a really no temperature so there's a number of ways that you can melt this at home in the past we've used a small toaster oven set to 150 degrees Celsius or 300 degrees Fahrenheit for our American friends we've even seen some people do it with a tin can and a heat gun but our favorite way is using something like a panini press or a sandwich toaster as this applies tourettes heat for top and bottom and therefore melts it really really fast another benefit is that they never seem to peak above the optimum temperature for melting plastic at least not the ones we've tried as well as the panini press there's a couple of other things you're going to need a good quality roll of greaseproof paper is going to help stop the plastic sticking to the press so motherly spray will help stop the plastic sticking to the paper and a good pair of gloves will help stop the plastic sticking to your hands with the gloves specifically there's two things you want to be looking out for the first is obviously heat protection for the second is some kind of non-porous surface of the plastic doesn't stick try and go for a plastic or a synthetic glove over a fabric one you'll notice later that we tried about three different types before we found the right pair so the last bit of equipment we find is really Hubble for us but isn't essential as a set of weighing scales once you've made your first blank you can go back and weighed this and this will give you exact weight if the plaster you used so for every future mold you can use the exact right amount plastic and this massively cuts down on waste so in order to make our pen we first need to make ourselves a pen blank in order to do that we've made ourselves a melamine mold just out of some scrap we had lying around we're going to heat the plastic in our press pop it in the mold clamp it tight and wait for it to cool down once you're happy that the plastic in the press has formed a single mass and it's bonded together really nicely you can pop on your gloves and you can roll it off the greaseproof paper [Music] you're probably going to want to repeat this process of twisting and folding the plastic before putting it back on the heat to three maybe four times [Music] so these blanks really don't take that long to cool they're pretty hard within about ten minutes but do have their heat for quite a while so if you're impatient like us just throw them in some water for two to three minutes and they're good to get then it's just a case of trimming down the excess we tend to use the bandsaw for this but you really can use anything to turn our newly formed blank of recycle plastic into a lovely pen we use cheap pen kits that we buy online these can be as cheap as just a couple of pounds but I would recommend getting a few just so you can practice or some [Music] [Music] what are the main issues we've had to overcome we're making these HTTP pens is that traditionally you'd use epoxy to glue the tubes into the blanks before turning what we found is that there's no real glue that you can use to bond HDPE to anything so what we've had to do is drill a slightly under sized hole and use a compression fit to force the tube into the blank so you can buy a specific press to help push these parts depende together however we're not professional pen makers that we very just started doing this so we find if you just chuck up a dome headed bolt in your drill press this works perfectly albeit it can be a little bit fiddly [Music] as Johnny said we're not professional pant owners which means we don't have a pen turning mandrel either all we use is a piece of steel rod with some brass tubing to act as bushings and this is work great for all the pens that we turn so far so this material turns really nicely on the lathe you can use traditional woodturning trizol x' or ones with carbide tips both give it a great finish as is always the nature of turning there is a lot of waste but the great thing with this is you can collect all of that up and remelt it and make it to another black suit remember earlier when I said that air bubbles are going to be your worst enemy obviously we left one in there just to make this a really thorough demonstration we had a little chip out at the end of one of our cuts but this is super easy to fix with a heat gun and a putty knife just make sure you're applying heat to both sides before you put them together [Music] so the heat gun fix worked really well but unfortunately we must have had an air bubble right next to the tube which then caused this one to fail so that's just the way it goes when using this material but not to worry you can cut the plastic off get that re melted for you next blank and then we use the tube to the next pen so instead of drowning in our sorrows we fired the press back up and we whipped up another blank and got that mounted on the lathe this one turned out much better and we got to a shape that we were happy with really quickly to start the finishing process we use some files as well as some sandpaper working up through the grits to get a much smoother surface texture [Music] to get a super smooth finish we use a product called micro mesh which is a series of wet sanding pads ranging from 1500 to twelve thousand grit we finished up on the lathes with some burnishing cream just to give it a really nice high polish so the last thing you need to do is assemble we use the same technique on the pin the drill as we did earlier and then just follow the instructions that come with the pen kit this is super easy to do and take no time [Music] there you go that's our guide to work with HDPE and hopefully there's enough there to get you started and likewise if you've got any tips and tricks yourself that we've missed out just let us know in the comments below as we'd love to learn more well be sure to pop links in the description below of all the equipment that we used in this video if this video has inspired you to start your own HDPE creation we'd absolutely love to see what you do tag off Instagram or send us a message with what you've done the massive thank you to our patrons that support us and help us keep these videos coming if you want to join the Brotherhood check the link in description below and we'd love you forever we're even going to give away one of our HDPE pens that we've made to one of our patrons so if you want to be in with a chance of winning head on over and join the Brotherhood thanks for Jim Cheers

Channel: Brothers Make

Views: 2,156,019

Keywords: brothers make, how to melt HDPE, HDPE pen, hdpe tutorial, recycled plastic products, beginners guide, hdpe molding, recycled plastic, milk jugs, HDPE, HDPE lids, pen turning, how to melt plastic, hdpe melting, how to, molding & casting tutorial, pen turning project, diy making plastic parts, pen casting, howto, hdpe mallet, homemade, milk jar, recycling, recycle, hdpe plastic, hdpe pipe

Id: -igxhoGEQFU

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 28 2019