Interesting findings about HDPE when applied with high temperatures

[z.s.tar.gz]

I recently did a few tests with a piece of HDPE and a blowtorch and noticed a few interesting tidbits:

1. HDPE is extremely heat resistant. My blowtorch gets up to about 1200F and it did minimal damage after ~30 seconds of exposure. The only real effect it had was a minor amount of melting at the point of application. This leads to the second finding:

2. HDPE behaves much like parafin wax in that it melts to a clear liquid then cools back to its original properties (eg. color, hardness, texture) This fact is responsible for the most important finding:

3. HDPE can be heated in one spot and partially melted to allow bending. This means that you can use HDPE to make custom chassis mounts. Here is a picture of a L bracket a made to test the concept:



Theoretically the same idea can be applied to melt the entire piece into a mold and create custom molded parts although I haven't tested this yet.

[little-c]

beware of fumes. once plastics like that ignite, the fumes are genraly toxic. thick black smoke and a yellow flame.

but other than the safety aspect, thats quite a useful find.

[SmAsH]

Gotta get some hdpe sometime

[z.s.tar.gz]

beware of fumes. once plastics like that ignite, the fumes are genraly toxic. thick black smoke and a yellow flame.

but other than the safety aspect, thats quite a useful find.

That's another thing: The HDPE doesn't ignite like other plastics. It does catch on fire at the point of the blowtorch but that flame goes out as soon as the heat is removed. As fas as the smoke thing, like I said it acts a lot like wax in that there isn't much smoke if any at all.

Also let me note that while I was bending that piece there was no flames or smoke. I believe this is because I was heating an area of it as opposed to holding the flame at one point for an extended period of time.