Meting Plastic Time

Remember a couple of days ago when I shared how to clean a can easily for an upcoming project I had here? Well here is the project.

For a project that my brother has on the go he asked if I'd be able to make a rot resistant, durable block with a bit of give. I've seen and heard of people melting down various plastics to make things and I figured that would do. After all that is what many 3D printers use as their media.

For the source stock I am using recycled HDPE from various containers that would just get thrown in the recycle bin anyway.

I cut them just enough to be able to fit in, It would probably be better if I'd made the pieces smaller though.

For a heat source I just used the grill on the barbeque. You can see where all the fat has burned off here from heating various tings without cooking. I need to replace the heat beads so that I can cook over a more even heat because really the bit in the middle gets burnt and the edges stay a bit raw. Not so nice.

This is where I finished off, I only had the one container to melt down and they take up a lot less space then I thought they would. So I will have to collect somewhat more material before I finish this off.
You can see the label in there. If you've read my previous post about the can then you will understand how lazy I can be. If I didn't need to take the label off then I wasn't going to. Looks like I probably should've though.

I've had some suggestions on how to more accurately control the heat without having to be as worried about setting the HDPE on fire so I'll give that a go once I have some more feed stock.

Cheers,
Rex