Homebrew PCBs

Simon Whitehead wrote:

> On 11 Mar 2004, at 17:25, Phil wrote:
> 
> 
>>why welding?  does that give superior results to gluing?  PVC is
>>really easy to glue but looks a little messy if not careful.  I use
>>it for water pipes (pressured and unpressured) and it holds pretty
>>well.  Just curious.
>>
>>also, I made my tank with plexiglass and aquarium sealer.  Kind of
>>ugly but works just fine.  I was a little nervous but it has stood up
>>to a fair number of etchings.
> 
> 
> My application is OT.  It is a very large photographic wet bench - 
> about 86 x 54 inches - and I am prepared to use glue if necessary but I 
> would rather master the welding if I can.  I have got to get something 
> out of my expensive hot air gun!
> 
> Thanks again for the help...
> 

Some good information on hot air plastic welding can be
found here;
http://www.tempatron.co.uk/pdf_files/Principles.pdf

What are the dimensions of the tank ?
Welding is the only way to make fabricate tanks. PVC solvent glue 
is only suitable for joins with a large contact surface area and 
the forces are lateral, e.g. PVC pips fittings, flat sheet glued 
together.

Successful plastic welding requires correct air temperature, 
speed, rod size , nozzle shape, and how you direct the nozzle. 
Once you get these right then I'm sure you'll find welding easy 
and an extremely useful skill for chemical tank building, as 
Markus pointed out. Get lots of different rods to experiment 
with. Depending on the weld I use 1/8" round PVC, 5 mm or 7 mm 
triangle PVC rods for my tanks. Mostly 5 mm triangle.