Repairing Orange Case on Form 2 Machine

What type of glue would be used to repair cracks in the Orange protective case on the Form 2? I had a hot resin spill a while back and notice that there are some cracks in the case. One particular really should be fixed. It’s the seam along the bottom side, left in this case, that is almost entirely detached from the Orange shell and it needs gluing soon before it totally breaks off.

You can buy replacements from Formlabs.

That said, ordinary plumbing cement is your best hardware store choice. Cynoacrylate (superglue) probably won’t hold up well.

Yes, I know that. But why buy a replacement if you can glue the old one and still use it? There should be some glue, CA, Plastic Weld, etc. that works with this material.
The case on my old machine is also broken from the same reason. I have a new replacement for that but won’t install it until the old case isn’t usable anymore. In a manufacturing environment cost is everything.

Maybe gorilla glue would work OK

The solvent/glue for acrylic is acetone.

I have a bottle of that sitting around, never been opened. I’ll try it on a scrap just to make sure. That material is real touchy. [grin] Thanks.

Chemistry pedant stepping in here for a moment: the absolute best acrylic adhesive you can get is methylene chloride, also known as dichloromethane. And with this, acetone or superglue, your best bet is to touch a drip to the edge of the plastic where the crack begins and let the adhesive wick its way along the crack through capillary action. All of these substances will leave destructive white traces if simply brushed onto the plastic over the crack.

I can hear all of you saying “what normal person happens to have a ready stash of methylene chloride handy?” Well, if you also use a filament printer loaded with PLA, that chemical (please don’t make me type it our again) is used to smooth PLA prints in the way that acetone is used to smooth ABS prints. It also happens to be very chemically similar to chloroform, but now we’re touching upon hobbies better left off the public forums.

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Might be a good idea to ‘drill stop’ the cracks too. If you drill a small (3 mm 1/8th inch) hole a few millimetres away from the very, very, VERY end of each crack, should the crack continue it will break into the drilled hole and the stress will be relieved around the hole, stopping the crack propagating any further.

I could be wrong, but my gut tells me there’s a lot of internal stress in the orange cover from the manufacturing process, and using a solvent on the plastic will cause it to crack more.

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