How To WELD 3D Prints - FUSING Prints Together with NO GLUE!

all right so the time has come you finally printed your first iron man helmet or maybe an iron man suit or some other type of huge proper cosplay but how do you make them stick together let's talk about it [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey guys what's up welcome to my channel i'm frank and today i want to teach you about pla welding now i know i've already done a video on this a long long time ago and i think it's time for an update because there's a lot in there i didn't cover and a lot more i've learned since then so today i want to rehash that video go over it talk about what i've learned some updated methods and why i think it's just a crucial tool to add to your arsenal so first off what is pla welding really it's just a fancier way of saying melting plastic together 3d printed parts are typically just some type of plastic abs pla petg and all you're doing is taking it and fusing the parts together now this isn't going to be a direct substitute for things like super glues or epoxies but in a lot of applications i think this is just a far superior method even the epoxies and glues that you know almost melt the plastic together and really fuse it nice and strong if you're looking at from a welding material standpoint if you're melting these two plastics together permanently there's really going to be no stronger bond than that these are now one part together with nothing in between now your mileage may vary not everybody's going to have the exact same experience or do as good of a job it's going to take some practice and there are some applications where you're going to want to use glues or epoxies and substitute from just melting the parts together now there's a couple of ways to do this my personal favorite way is just using a really cheap soldering iron now already i know there's gonna be a few of you in the comments or at least one person uh solder solder there's an l in it it's solder i'm sorry that's how i'm gonna say it if you have any issue with that leave a comment down below it helps the algorithm thank you but i'm taking a cheap 10 soldering iron that i got off of amazon and i can adjust the temperature which you can play with i never do and this way it's throwaway if this ever breaks it's pretty cheap to replace and i've had this one for two years now it's still going strong what's also great about this is it comes with swappable tips so as i'm melting the plastic together i can swap out for more of a knife type point and there's even like a really fine tip point so i can swap them around and i have a little bit of variety but like any tool that heats up to 450 degrees celsius please be careful with this this thing can get hot i have burned and maimed myself with this before so just please be careful do it in a safe environment wear gloves be safe now i'll talk more on this later in the video but this can be used for a multitude of different applications if you're just printing like i said large armors and props and cosplay and you have to cut them into multiple pieces maybe something broke maybe you had a piece of armor fall off maybe you dropped a helmet this is limitless in the applications you can apply it to but that's enough talking let me show you what this is okay say you have part a and you want to marry it to part b without using any glues well let me show you how first off the better the initial fitment the easier this is going to be you're going to want to make sure the sides are flat and if things aren't lining up too perfectly oh look that's the wrong part let's swap that out you're going to want to make sure that they again line up nice and good and that's pretty close and feel free to use like little dabs and drops of super glue however if you touch the super glue with the hot soldering iron it's going to make some pretty awful chemicals and smoke i do not recommend it try to use tape or even like hot glue because this stuff is bad for you anytime you're doing this please wear a respirator please at least be in a well ventilated area this is smoke and this is melting plastic so please please please be careful but that's enough about safety you want to get them nice and mated up again you can use some tape to hold them together that's exactly what i'm going to do initially here all right i have the part firmly held together and now i'm gonna do my first weld i have the soldering iron and you can even use a wood burner for this honestly but you want a nice exposed spot it feels nice and smooth and i'm gonna take the two edges and then i'm just gonna start kind of melting them together [Music] i want you guys to imagine as if you're folding dough or play-doh you're going to want to try to overlap the pieces and just melt everything together but you'll probably notice that this is starting to leave a little bit of an indent just because of the way the thing was printed there's hollow spaces plastic is gonna melt down into these divots so you can actually go and add more material if you need to i save extra raft material and the little bits of filament that are left on the roll that you otherwise can't use this is invaluable for pla welding now i have literal pieces of plastic i can go and melt into the part i can build it up i can fill gaps this is just it's literally like real welding except instead of metal and adding material i'm melting plastic together [Music] now i have a little pool of plastic i can again take around and smooth out try to fill in that gap a little bit more and make it as nice and pretty as possible and once this part now cools down i can start to peel the tape back a little bit and start to weld more along the seam filling it and just welding it together as i go [Music] now this method is all in great for the inside of the part that you're really not going to see but what about the outside of the part now this is where it's going to come into user discretion if i know i can sit here and sand this part down and i'm really not worried about how ugly it's going to be well i can kind of use that to my advantage i can weld the outside and later sand it down smooth it out but if there are a lot of details in this area say like a black panther mask or something you're going to want to be a little bit more selective about where you use your welding versus your glue or some type of combination of the two but in this case this is a pretty flat surface so i'm going to go ahead and weld this because i know i can sand this down super easy here's a fun little bonus tip for you in the middle of the video if you guys have any like ugly support material spots that you know didn't break off as clean you can take the soldering iron and actually smooth these spots out and it's not perfect but at least put you in the right spot to that post processing so it's just a little bit less to sand it can really help you clean up some of those detail lines if you just take your time with it and make it look pretty all right so i've gone and added a little bit more material using some left over you know filament and smoothed it out as much as i could now again i can go and sand this but i'm really happy with how this came out and you can't sit here and argue that this isn't pretty much now one solid piece i didn't need to go to the store and buy something i always have my iron you know somewhere in the room heat it up and start fusing the parts together and you know good to go but oh no you've gone and broken apart well uh i mean you could dump a bunch of glue in there and hope or i don't know maybe we could just weld it back together [Music] all right cool there we are good as new and then any little marks i left can just be sanded out later so let's take a quick little pause and actually talk about why this is so different than something like a 3d pen now if you guys aren't familiar with 3d pens they're basically like a hot glue gun where it melts the filament out the tip and then you can kind of build designs and you get they're kind of fun to play with uh you know for kids and stuff um not really accurate but i've seen people do some crazy stuff with them now they're great to have again as a tool but they're really only surface deep if you have something like a prop that you're trying to weld together the 3d pen can't really penetrate into the prop itself yeah it can get a couple millimeters into the plastic but something like the soldering iron can really bury itself you know farther down into the plastic and melt all of the surface together you can absolutely get away with using something like a 3d pen on like helmets or more small props that aren't going to have a lot of weight and forces put on them but if we're talking about something like this loki's scepter there's no metal rods inside of this thing and i could not have gotten the strength out of this if we're using something just like glue or you know surface weld i had to bury the soldering iron into the plastic to get this to be one piece or i really wouldn't trust it you can actually see right here on this keyblade handle where i was burying the soldering iron all the way through the handle and then filling it back in with extra material because it's going to leave divots in holes but i was able to put the iron all the way through this in multiple spots to make it nice and strong i know there's not anything on it right now but it's really sturdy now and i trust this handle without any type of reinforcement also say you have a print stop or fail halfway and you need to print the rest of it pla welding it back together can really save the day i'm not worried about any glue coming off or moving this is welded together and again well when i'm done with it it's going to be one part again on top of all that learning how to use a heat tool or a soldering iron or just manipulate the plastic in terms of heat can help you do some really cool things like melting rafts and hiding magnets placing and welding things like little rafts and tabs this way you can take your cosplay to the next level and you know everything's gonna be there nice and secure and trust me it's a pretty cool feeling when all this stuff just lines up and locks together this entire captain america shield or well what's left of it was pla welded together in four different pieces and i don't know if i would have trusted any other method to really give me that nice strength that's not going to leave any cracks well cracks i didn't cause sorry so i don't think i need to drag this video out anymore guys i just want to cover a couple of little caveats to this obviously if you're going to be pla welding something that's maybe already painted you have to be a little bit more careful not to punch all the way through the plastic heat discoloration and warpage can happen you can make the plastic kind of ruin the paint if you're not careful um but you know mistakes happen uh the butt plate to my iron man suit actually broke just the other day and i'm to weld this back together it's already been welded back together quite a few times and i used rafts and pla welding to make my own mounting points just to make it easier to wear so just go grab a really cheap soldering iron start saving your wasted filament and even some failed projects and just start practicing and experimenting it's going to be so valuable for you guys to have this technique under your belt and i know it's going to help you in the long run if you guys found this video helpful at all please don't forget to hit the like button and if you haven't subscribed to the channel yet please consider doing so and ringing that notification bell this way you stay up to date on all the videos i have coming out i'm going to be redoing a lot of my old tutorials and i've just learned so much since then that i want to share with you guys and let me know down below what you're going to be pla welding what projects you're working on or maybe how this has helped you or maybe some stuff you've done that i haven't thought of it'd be really cool to get your guys's feedback and opinions on this and if it's helped you out at all but that's gonna be wrapped for this video guys as always thank you so much for watching and you have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Frankly Built

Views: 121,870

Keywords: PLA welding, how to weld pla, how to fuse 3d prints, how to weld 3d prints, welding 3d prints, how to i combine 3d prints, how to i attach 3d prints, 3d printed, 3d printing, welding

Id: W_UHmlmQpuw

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 30 2022