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In general, plastic is bonded by using screws, nuts, bolts,
or adhesives.
From the environmental
viewpoint, however, the use of screws and nuts/bolts requires the disassembling
of the plastic product and sorting disassembled materials, while adhesives
generate volatile organic compounds
(VOC) even after the drying of the adhesive and may cause toxic gas to be
generated when incinerated.
Is there any other method besides screws and adhesives
for the bonding of plastics?
The answer
is yes, and it is the heat welding method, which adequately utilizes the
properties of thermoplastic resin (heating -> melting / cooling ->
solidifying).
Suppose you want to join two pieces of chocolate together. If you melt
the portions to be joined by heating, make both pieces come into contact
with each other, manually press them, and wait until they are cooled down,
the joined pieces will turn into a single piece of chocolate. Concerning
plastic, adhesive works like chocolate melted by heat, meaning that this
method is environmentally friendly.
These types of heat welding methods have been widely
employed in recent years, and conventional heat welding methods include hot
plate welding, vibration welding and ultrasonic wave welding.
- Hot plate welding
- Ultrasonic wave welding
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