Examination of Thermoplastic Polymers for Splicing and Bending

Materials of thermoplastic polymer when they break is usually thrown away, or is recycled which requires a long process. The purpose of this study is splicing the broken thermoplastic polymer using hot gas hand welding with different variations of welding wire/electrodes. Materials of thermoplastic polymer used are Polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), and Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by using welding wire like the three materials. The method is carried out by using hot gas hand welding, there are two materials that cannot be connected, namely PE with PVC welding wire, and PP with PVC welding wire. The permeable liquid penetrant test is PP with PE welding wire, and PVC with PE welding wire. The longest elongation is PE with PE welding wire is 15.96% and the best of bending result is PVC with PVC welding wire reach value 181.2 kgf/mm2. The microstructure was all described in Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observations.