Plastic welding, custom RV tanks, part 1 of 2

in this video we're going to transform these two sheets of hdpe plastic into an rv tank now we wanted a custom tank to fit the space exactly how we wanted it and we wanted to hold a 125 gallons not exactly an off the shelf item so we decided to make our own follow along we'll show you how it's done first thing we need to do is cut those sheets down to size to do so we've measured the space that we have available and we put a plastic cutting blade on the table saw once we have our pieces cut to size we need to clean the edges and that's what this little deburring tool is for great little tool easy to hold easy to use and if you look here you'll see the edges are all frayed and ruffled and the burning tool removes all of that leaves us with a nice little chamfer that we're going to use to help solidify our welds for proper adhesion the next tool we need is a wire brush preferably stainless steel we're just going to go over and braid the edges where we're going to be welding we made this handy little jig it's got a perfect right angle on it and this will hold this in place so we have screws along the bottom and it's just resting on those screws they're not tight and two screws on the side to hold it in place next we need to line up the two parts and we don't want them one on top of each other we actually want to leave this little gap in this little gap we're going to fill with the welding so to make sure this doesn't move on us we'll put a couple screws at the back and everything will stay in place [Music] so one screw registers left to right it from moving that way and the other screw prevents it from moving back next we need to prep them to clean them so we're using acetone and where the weld is going to be we want to make sure it's nice and clean and we'll give it a few seconds to dry this is the plastic welding gun there are many different ones on the market we chose this one because of the simplicity of use and it has a hose relaying the fan and the heating element that way we're not carrying around the fan all the time a lot of them that you see on the market are actually like this so it's one piece but this little hose makes it a lot more convenient to use the gun itself just comes with this tip and use this tip for what's called pendulum welding and i'll show you what pendulum welding is in a few minutes but there's a few other tips that you can buy as an accessory pack and the first one is this this is just to lightly tack the pieces together this is not welding this is just to hold them together so they don't move around as you're welding them because you have to exert a fair bit of pressure when you're welding the next and the one we use the most is this one this is designed for 5 16 round rod or 5 millimeters and the rod is hdpe it's the same plastic as this and you can get it in different colors and you feed this through and as you're feeding it through the hot air from the gun melts it and this lays it down and you'll see that as we go along as far as temperature goes we're welding hdpe high density polyethylene and every plastic has its own temperature and its own rod this one happens to be 300 degrees celsius or 572 degrees fahrenheit so let's get to welding unfortunately plastic isn't exactly straight or rigid so we need to support it a little bit so we have our 90 degree angle on the bottom and we put a bit of angle iron or angle aluminum in this case to hold this joint shut as we weld so to tack these two together it's a very easy procedure you slowly move this along lightly melting the plastic [Applause] and the two become one now this isn't a strong weld in any way shape or form it's just to hold them together so they don't move [Applause] be very careful that tip is hot and now we're ready to weld we have the welding rod we have the gun and we have the chamfer between the two sheets we have a little audio problem that's why we're doing a voice over here but here we go so we insert the rod into the gun and we let the heat slightly start melting the rod that way it's going to adhere to the two sheets when we put it down now we got it melted we take the gun insert it in the chamfer and slowly start moving it now the gun does not move with me pulling on it it's actually the pressure on the rod that moves the gun the weld fills in beautifully making a nice solid joint [Music] now the big difference between a hobbyist gun like this one and a professional gun is a professional gun will actually feed the rod into the gun whereas a hobbyist gun like we have here i'm having to feed the rod it's actually the feeding of the rod that is moving the gun forward i'm not pulling on the gun i'm just guiding it it's the feeding of the rod that is moving the gun [Applause] now that we have the well done we can remove the screws that are holding this on and we're going to flip this over onto the bench there and start welding the other side so once we get it flipped over we're going to be putting this on the other side of this rack to make sure that it stays at 90 degrees because as you heat the plastic tends to move a little bit mittens the next step we're going to do is weld on one of the ends the first thing we have to do as you saw before we need to brush this to make sure it's has a good adhesive surface and clean it with acetone we can see here that the weld actually came through which is a great sign [Music] putting a few clamps along the top edge because as we heat this as i mentioned before the plastic likes to move this will keep it in place now we get to weld along the whole length on the inside [Music] [Music] this is one of the most structurally significant welds in the whole tank this is one of the ends and it's going to help keep it all square so that's why we have so many clamps here holding it all together providing support for this piece when we tack it in we have clamps going along the side we have clamps everywhere but once this is in and the other end is in then the tank will want to say a square by itself it won't be a fight to keep it square [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one of the most important parts is to get this corner so it doesn't leak in order to do so we've welded up this side and we're going to go up here but to start we're going to make sure that we [Music] pre-heat the corner a little bit and pre-heat our rod so we want to melt the end of that rod just a little bit like it's starting to go now and then force it into that corner and before removing any of the clamps we're gonna let this cool down now you'll notice how this is now got a really big bow to it even though it's flat when we started that's because of the heating contracting when we're welding so we have to move this where it needs to be using a bit of force but only once it's cooled and we've welded the other side now that we have both ends in we have to put the center in the center acts as a baffle so as we're going around corners the water is not going to slosh quickly from side to side the only hole allowing it to go from one side to the other will be these two little holes here so that's going to help balance the load keep it from sloshing side to side we have other baffles in here as well the reason we put the ends on and this baffle in will allow us to keep this square when we flip it over to put on the other side welding the other side on is probably the most difficult part of it because now you're having to reach inside of here to be able to weld that's why we're going to be putting the baffles in afterwards or the other baffles [Applause] this wild we're not concerned about water stability or leaks but we still want to make a really good weld [Music] for strength now sometimes it happens that you have to stop mid weld to do something either reposition or you're burning your hands or something like that so in order to do so the easy way to do this with this type of welder is to simply pull off like this and you want to pull all the way off the rod when you want to start up again you insert your rod back into your welder go back down to where you were and simply start over again [Laughter] so you

Channel: Lacroix Cruiser

Views: 217,094

Keywords: Lacroix cruiser, Plastic welding, HDPE, RV, RV tanks, Custom tanks, Welding plastic, Yvan lacroix, Plastic bonding, Plastic fabrication, Plastic repair, School bus, School bus conversion, Welding HDPE, Building RV tanks, Black tank, Grey tank, Gray tank, RV rénovation

Id: ddLlSRtYqFU

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 25 2020