Plastic Parts Repair

[DennisCA]

I wish I could get my hands on some MEK, I can get it in spray form but uh not optimal. Seems weirdly difficult to find a simple bottle of the stuff in Finland.

I used fiberglass to patch up some stuff, last night I repaired the plastic insert that has the lever with which you open the rear hatch from inside.

[volvolugnut]

I wish I could get my hands on some MEK, I can get it in spray form but uh not optimal. Seems weirdly difficult to find a simple bottle of the stuff in Finland.

I used fiberglass to patch up some stuff, last night I repaired the plastic insert that has the lever with which you open the rear hatch from inside.

MEK is easy to get in the US at most hardware stores. Perhaps in FInland you can get from a Marine supply store that sells fiberglass repair materials. Or maybe a commercial paint supplier.

volvolugnut

[Grantkat]

DennisCA,

If you cant get MEK, ACETONE works just as well. In the US acetone is available at any hardware, or bigbox store. You can generally find it anywhere they sell paint products.

[DennisCA]

That's great acetone I can get anywhere. MEK doesn't seem to be banned or anything here either so it's strange it seems hard to find, apparently it's the solvent in the hardener for the fiberglass polyester.

[abscate]

My efforts didn’t work out so nicely. I used 40 g of abs filament in 75 ml acetone as I couldn’t find my MEK

It was too liquid, and I had trouble getting the pieces mated and held together tightly.

Oh well, live, learn, improve, prosper

It takes overnight to dissolve the abs by the way.

[454cid]

My efforts didn’t work out so nicely. I used 40 g of abs filament in 75 ml acetone as I couldn’t find my MEK

It was too liquid, and I had trouble getting the pieces mated and held together tightly.

Oh well, live, learn, improve, prosper

It takes overnight to dissolve the abs by the way.

That lower picture, is that a new flavor from Smuckers???

*** Public Service Announcement ***
A word of caution about storing MEK. I've had a mostly unused quart for about 20 years, maybe longer. While going through my shelves to get rid of things at the county's Household Hazardous Waste event, I ran across the MEK and decided to get rid of it. Unfortunately, I found the can only contained a few table spoons of liquid at the most. Over the past 20 years it evaporated in my basement, which means I've been breathing it in. Just super

I've got other easily evaporated things, like acetone and lacquer thinner, but those are in the garage. I don't know why I kept the MEK in the house. I guess part of it was "out of sight, out of mind", so it never got addressed past the initial shoving it onto a shelf.

[abscate]

Well your OSHA exposure limit is 200 ppm so a liter over 20 years probably isnt much to worry about.

You respire about 10 liters per minute, so over 20 years....thats a nice round 105M liters

One liter of MEK will expand to 200 liters of vapour - so thats 2ppm or 100x below the OSHA limit

The liter to quart conversion is ignored here...

[Grantkat]

abscate - i had a similar issue originally where it was too liquid. i added more ABS just like your picture (though smaller lengths and let it dissolve stirring every few hours...it did thicken and was easier to use and get to stay in one place...the trick is to get them secured with the dissolved ABS and let it set. i used some blue painters tape and i had them "braced" to stay in a particular position...its a pain but i got it to work

[abscate]

Painters tape….that’s what I missed.

[Grantkat]

also on the bak side of a longer narrower piece i placed some headless nails across the break in the "puddle" of the ABS slurry to provide some support - sport of rebar for plastic car pieces......