{"id":166,"date":"2013-10-02T06:48:04","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T06:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2013-12-04T16:36:47","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T16:36:47","slug":"excellent-glue-for-3d-printed-pla-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.waters.to\/blog\/excellent-glue-for-3d-printed-pla-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"Polycaprolactone, an Excellent Glue for 3d-Printed PLA parts"},"content":{"rendered":"

3d printed PLA is notoriously difficult to glue, but I have discovered an easy-to-handle, non-toxic glue that works really well with it: Polycaprolactone. I get mine in pellet form for about $20\/lb — a search on Amazon for polycaprolactone<\/a>\"\" will turn up several different brands, and you can also find it at makershed.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here, you can see a 3d-printed bracket that cracked due to poor layer orientation. No big deal — I just heated up a couple of pellets of PCL in hot water, pressed them into the gap like plumber’s putty, and squeezed the parts together. 2 minute fix, vs a couple of hours to re-print…<\/p>\n

\"repaired<\/a><\/p>\n

The color even matches pretty well! I didn’t bother to clean up the squeeze-out, but that would have been easy enough to scrape off while the glue was still warm.<\/p>\n

As another example, I used a single pellet of PCL to carefully glue each gear shaft of this elliptical gear set. <\/p>\n

\"Elliptical<\/a>

Elliptical PLA gears, with a single bead of PCL to glue the shafts together.<\/p><\/div>\n

It wasn’t hard to keep the gears from locking up — I just spun the gears for the 30 seconds or so that it takes the glue to cool off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3d printed PLA is notoriously difficult to glue, but I have discovered an easy-to-handle, non-toxic glue that works really well with it: Polycaprolactone. I get mine in pellet form for about $20\/lb — a search on Amazon for polycaprolactone will … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,7,6],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-3d-printing","tag-pcl","tag-polycaprolactone"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t