Although 3D printers are great, people tend to use them as a universal hammer wherein almost everything becomes a nail that’s just begging to be struck. So as hacker appetites become finicky with the same old fare, it’s refreshing to see an enclosure restoration done in such an old-school fashion. To wit: [Doidão Santos]’ classic repair of the crumbling side fairings on a vintage amplifier.

Yes, instead of designing replacement pieces, printing them, and hiding the layered evidence with paint or an acetone blur, [Doidão] called upon a broken sound system whose chassis bore a relief in the corners similar to that of the amplifier.

After cutting out two matched pieces of donated plastic, [Doidão] taped them together and welded ’em with a soldering iron outfitted with a curved-but-flattened spade tip that looks ideal for this purpose. Although the donor enclosure provided much-needed relief, one corner was lacking in this aesthetic, so [Doidão] cast a little bit of molten plastic using the relief as a mold.

Once the pieces were tacked together, [Doidão] filed them down, sanded them, polished them to a nice shine, and installed them on the amplifier. They look great, and no one will be the wiser. But if we were in [Doidão]’s shoes, we’d tell everyone what we’d done. Be sure to check it out after the break.

Ready for more fantastic plastic resto-hacks? Let us introduce you to [drygol].

Thanks for the tip, [danjovic]!

I must do some more investigating this technique- I’ve never had satisfactory results trying to melt plastics together for repairs . I don’t have much success getting good penetration on the join.

It really depends on the type of plastic. You can get a “plastic welder” which is basically the soldering iron that’s being used, along with some rods of plastic to “weld” with.

I bought one of the Horror Fraught plastic welders. I have had usable results, ugly, but usable. I’ve only been able to “weld” one type of plastic with it, certainly not PVC.

You really need an iron with temperature control, knowledge of the plastic involved, a few sacrificial tips, patience and a bunch of test material. Consider preheating with a hot air rework tool. Also slowly cooling (annealing) the plastic can help.

Then maybe, depending. It’s mostly used on films e.g. bag sealing, joining rolls at edges.

Bic lighters have the butane plumbing friction welded into place.

You can also shave plastic from various places on the inside like support ribs and the like and depending on the plastic dissolve them in a liquid plastic solvent cement and make a paste to repair holes or gouges – since it’s from the same part, the color match is pretty good. I’ve done this several times to fix broken corners and deep gouges.

This works for many plastics including ABS and similar formulations used for injection molding consumer applications (stuff that doesn’t need high temp or other special requirements like might be needed for various industrial applications).

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