Glue ABS plastic

 

Glue ABS plastic

ABS plastic can be glued with acetone. This is a solvent of ABS and it temporarily makes part of the plastic liquid . Couple of drops and it is fixed.

Alternatively, superglue does also work well to glue ABS and PLA plastics.

Acetone is a bit messy to work with. It is very smelly and evaporates very fast. So I needed a way to minimise evaporation and easy application. I found a tip on a forum to put it in a syringe. I was afraid the acetone would dissolve the syringe, but that did not happen.

It is very easy to use with a syringe. Just by holding it in your hand small drops appear due to your hand warmth. So you don’t need to press the plunger.

Because the acetone evaporates very fast, the parts are fixed together within 30 seconds. Same speed as superglue. The acetone is very fluidly, so it fills tiny gaps very nicely.

Also you can store the acetone in the syringe. There is only a very small hole where the acetone can evaporate out. Even after storing it for a couple of weeks it looks like no acetone has evaporated. I normally store it upright, with needle pointing up.

I just took a normal needle and grinded the tip off: