Quite often when doing construction works when the owner produces overhaul, they face many problems that need to be solved using the tools at hand. For example, it is quite often necessary to shape a plastic article into a curved shape. Of course, you can go to the store and buy a finished product, but the search for the most suitable product is often delayed. Below we will try to figure out how to bend plastic at home.
The very concept of "plastics" includes a large number of natural or synthetic polymers, which, when heated, can easily deform and change shape. After the material hardens, it will harden again. We will use this property of plastic, answering the question of how you can bend plastic.
You can bend plastic in several ways. The best of them, which allows you not to break the material and create a bend at the required angle, is using a molding machine.
To bend plastic, you need:
If you need to bend polystyrene, you can prepare several fixtures. Make a MDF (fibreboard) mandrel. Assemble the mold and, depending on the width and length of the plastic part, adjust it to the appropriate size. Go over the surface with sandpaper so that there are no distortions.
Prepare a shell for the silicone plastic part on a molding machine. It will be required to fix the flat workpiece on the mandrel and keep its surface from scratches and chips.
Insert the plastic part into the shell, then fix it in the MDF mandrel and place it on the molding machine. After the unit warms up and the plastic begins to settle on the mandrel, taking the required shape, you need to wait 5-7 minutes. Carefully remove the part from the machine using a glove on your hands. Then put it on metal surface to cool the material. Then remove the mandrel.
Bend plastic pipe much easier. Take an industrial hair dryer or gas burner, turn it on and point to the place where you are going to make the fold. The distance from the heating device to the surface of the part must be at least 5 cm.
Rotate the pipes without stopping, otherwise it may catch fire. Heat it until the material is soft, then bend it. Hold the pipe in this position for a while to harden the plastic.
Plastic slopes for windows or walls made of foamed PVC, you can bend at the required angle, making frequent cuts along the radius. Then, having created the necessary shape, fix them with special glue. Thus, you will make a part with bends and extensions.PVC pipes as a starting material for the manufacture of various crafts and homemade products are used more and more often. Sometimes the masters give them an ornate curved shape and the final work after application topcoat even the trimmings do not resemble the original material. In this master class similar technique we will demonstrate to you.
Materials (edit)
To bend PVC pipe you will need:
In addition, you will need a pipe bending device. In this case, a piece of plywood with dowels planted in the thickness was used.
Step 1... Usually, for bending pipes it is used gas-burner, but with its help you can give the pipe only a slight bend and only in a small area.
It is difficult to work out large sections of such material in this way. This takes a lot of time, besides, pipes often bend during operation, which does not look aesthetically pleasing.
To bend the pipe, as you can see in the photo of the final work, it needs to be evenly heated from the inside. We use sand for this difficult operation. So, first of all, you need to cut a piece of the required length from the PVC pipe and clean the cut edges.
Step 2... One end of the pipe must be sealed with tape. The tape must completely cover the hole.
Step 3... Use a funnel to fill the pipe with sand. Take it so that the pipe is completely filled with it.
Step 4... After measuring the required amount of sand, pour it into a metal bowl and heat well. The sand should be hot.
Step 5... Wear protective gloves on your hands. Using the same funnel, pour the prepared sand back into the pipe.
Step 6... Cover the other end of the pipe with tape. This is necessary so that the sand does not spill out during work.
Step 7... Leave the pipe like this for a couple of minutes. During this time, it will warm up from the inside. The material will become soft and pliable.
Step 8... While the sand is still hot, you can shape the cut pipe into the desired bend or shape. After that, remove the tape and pour the sand back.
I haven't written here for a long time! And you can find a bunch of good reasons for this ... And the main reason - I was engaged in the fact that, as they say on the radio - not the "format"! And now, not in my opinion, but out of necessity, I started to renovate the bathroom. Previously, the repair was made in 2005, this date is solely in order to understand what was then available from the available technologies and materials. I think that some of the ideas are still relevant now! For this reason, I decided to post several articles, so to speak, in reverse order, i.e. during parsing ...
This first article focuses on the bending of plastic panels when cladding rooms in corners. I think that this issue may be well known to many, but there will also be those who simply did not think about such a solution to the issue, but went exclusively along the path that our industry offers and bought various corners provided for these purposes. In my opinion, the option I proposed, firstly, will save money (not buying corners), secondly, it looks more aesthetically pleasing, and thirdly, it allows you to preserve the integrity of the structure. Maybe someone else will come up with positive qualities, I think these are quite enough!
And so, consider the very plastic panel! (for the demonstration, I used cuttings, debris - in short, garbage)
For creating inner corner it is quite simple to make a cut along the entire length of the panel from the "seamy side" of the required segment, which will form the corner in the future. The incision can be made with a simple construction knife. The panel is cut quite easily and simply.
As practice has shown, although a simple cut is enough, it is still better to completely "select the material" from this segment as a pair - as in the photo below. This is due to the fact that when bending the edges of the cut plastic can interfere with each other ... !!! not necessary, but recommend !!!
You need to bend it carefully, in smooth movements, gradually along the entire length, so that the panel does not break in this place. You can reach a fairly large angle.
For outer corner, it is required to "select a material", no longer from one segment. This is due to the fact that the cut edges overlap here and they begin to abut and prevent the panel from bending.
If you do everything correctly, slowly and carefully, then you can achieve such results !!!
INSIDE CORNER
OUTER CORNER
Attention, even and good angle, it will turn out if normal angles are also displayed on the walls that you are sheathing / pasting with panels !!!
PVC pipes have already thoroughly and firmly entered our life, more and more replacing the usual metal pipes... The result of this was that PVC pipes do not corrode, are not afraid of water, frost and, despite their high strength, are nevertheless easy to cut and bend to give the desired shape.
In addition to the use of PVC pipes in plumbing, they are very often used for the manufacture of various crafts.
To bend a pipe, pipe bending machines are usually used, but their prices are relatively high (from 3000 to several tens of thousands), and then - why do you need a machine if you do not set yourself the goal of doing it all the time?
As mentioned above, PVC pipes bend easily and you can give them the desired shape simply by hand, using only simple fixtures and tools, namely:
metal container;
cutting tool (scissors or knife);
protective gloves;
sandpaper;
gas / electric stove;
In some cases, for example, to bend a pipe in several directions, it will be necessary to make a simple device (template) for bending pipes, which is a plate of thick plywood or fiberboard with wooden pins inserted into it (nails or screws can be used).
In order for the pipe to bend evenly, without wrinkles, you need to warm it up evenly. For this, sand is used. Measure the required amount of sand in advance by pouring it into the pipe, after gluing one end of the pipe with tape. As practice shows, for a 3-meter pipe with a diameter of 20 mm of sand, about one bucket is required.
Then pour the sand from the pipe into the prepared metal container, heat the sand to a temperature of 80-100 degrees ...
... and put it back in the pipe again. Tape the filling hole with tape so that sand does not spill out of the pipe during operation. Attention: remember that the pipe will get hot, so do not forget to wear protective gloves!
Put the pipe on flat surface so that it warms up evenly. For a pipe with a diameter of 16-20 mm, this will take from 2 to 4 minutes.
Then place the pipe in the prepared template and gently bend it centimeter by centimeter in the desired directions. Do not hurry! Inaccurate work can result in uneven deflections and even pipe breaks along the outer diameter. In both cases, the marriage cannot be corrected. At the end of the work, leave the pipe in the template until it cools. After removing the pipe from the template, it will keep the shape that you gave it.
If a large amount of work is ahead, there is a risk that the sand will have time to cool down before the end of the work. To prevent this from happening, keep a construction hair dryer on hand, just in case, so that from time to time you can locally warm up the treated section of the pipe.
In principle, you can do without heating the sand on the stove at all, using only a hair dryer, but in this case the work will be unnecessarily delayed and, in addition, if you handle it carelessly, you can overheat the pipe, and it will simply "float". And this, again, is not a removable marriage.
In addition to the described method, there are other ways how to bend PVC pipes using other devices, for example, the so-called spring conductors. They are of two types: internal, when the conductor is inserted inside the pipe, and external - here the pipe is inserted into the conductor.
You can bend PVC pipes without any devices at all, but for this you must have strong hands and strong fingers. Watch a small but very informative video on this topic below.
