Quite often, when performing construction work, when the owner makes major repairs, they face many problems that need to be solved using improvised tools. For example, it is often necessary to give a plastic product a curved shape. Of course, you can go to the store and buy a finished product, but the search for the most suitable product is often delayed. Below we will try to figure out how to bend plastic at home.
The very concept of "plastics" combines a large number of natural or synthetic polymers, which, when heated, can easily deform and change shape. After the material hardens, it will again become solid. We will use this property of plastic when answering the question of how plastic can be bent.
You can bend plastic in several ways. The best of them, which allows not to break the material and create a bend at the required angle, is using a molding machine.
To bend plastic, you will need:
- molding machine;
- VAL board;
- silicone;
- industrial dryer.
Detailed instructions on how to bend plastic
If you need to bend polystyrene, you can prepare several fixtures. Make a mandrel from MDF (Fiberboard). Assemble the mold and, depending on the width and length of the plastic part, adjust it to the appropriate size. Go over the surface with sandpaper so that there are no distortions left.
Prepare the shell for the silicone plastic part on the molding machine. It will be required to fix the flat workpiece on the mandrel and preserve its surface from scratches and chips.
Insert the plastic part into the shell, then fix it in the MDF mandrel and put it on the molding machine. After the unit warms up and the plastic begins to settle on the mandrel, taking the required shape, you need to wait 5-7 minutes. Carefully remove the part from the machine while wearing a glove. Then place it on a metal surface to cool the material. Then remove the mandrel.
It is much easier to bend a plastic pipe. Take an industrial hair dryer or a gas burner, turn it on and aim at the place where you are going to make a fold. The distance from the heating device to the surface of the part must be at least 5 cm.
Rotate the pipes without stopping, otherwise it may catch fire. Heat it up until the material is soft, then bend it. Hold the pipe in this position for a while to allow the plastic to harden.
You can bend plastic slopes for windows or walls made of foamed PVC at the required angle by making frequent cuts along the radius. Then, having created the necessary shape, fix them with special glue. Thus, you will make a part with bends and extensions.PVC pipes are used more and more often as a starting material for the manufacture of various crafts and homemade products. Sometimes masters give them an ornate curved shape and the final work after applying the finish coat does not even resemble the original material. In this master class, we will demonstrate this technique to you.
materials
To bend a PVC pipe you will need:
the pipe itself;
strong tape;
sand;
funnel;
metal container;
gas or electric stove;
protective gloves;
knife or scissors;
saw or hacksaw, as well as sandpaper.
In addition, you will need a pipe bender. In this case, a piece of plywood with dowels planted in the thickness was used.
Step 1. Usually, a gas burner is used to bend pipes, but with its help it is possible to give the pipe only a slight bend and only in a small area.
It is difficult to work out significant segments of such material in this way. It takes a lot of time, moreover, pipes often bend during work, which does not look aesthetically pleasing.
To bend the pipe, as you see in the photo of the final work, it needs to be evenly heated from the inside. For this difficult operation, we use sand. So, first of all, you need to cut a piece of the required length from the PVC pipe and clean the edges of the cut.
Step 2. One end of the pipe must be sealed with tape. The tape should completely cover the hole.
With the help of a funnel, sand must be poured into the pipe. Take it so much that the pipe is completely filled with it.
Having measured the required amount of sand, pour it into a metal bowl and warm it up well. The sand must be hot.
Put on protective gloves on your hands. Using the same funnel, pour the prepared sand back into the pipe.
Cover the other end of the pipe with tape. This is necessary so that the sand does not spill out during work.
Leave the pipe like this for a couple of minutes. During this time, it will warm up from the inside. The material will become soft and pliable.
While the sand is still hot, you can shape the cut piece of pipe into the desired curve or shape. After that, remove the tape and pour the sand back.
When completely cool, the pipe will hold the shape you gave it.
PVC pipes have already thoroughly and firmly entered our lives, more and more replacing the metal pipes we are used to. The result of this was that PVC pipes do not corrode, are not afraid of water, frost, and, despite their high strength, are nevertheless easily cut and bent to give the desired shape.
In addition to the use of PVC pipes in plumbing, they are very often used for the manufacture of various crafts.
To bend a pipe, pipe bending machines are usually used, but their prices are relatively high (from 3000 to several tens of thousands), and then - why do you need a machine if you do not set yourself the goal of doing this all the time?
As mentioned above, PVC pipes are easy to bend and you can give them the desired shape simply by hand, using just simple fixtures and tools, namely:
metal container;
cutting tool (scissors or knife);
protective gloves;
sandpaper;
gas/electric stove;
construction dryer.
In some cases, for example, to bend a pipe in several directions, you will need to make a simple fixture (template) for bending pipes, which is a plate of thick plywood or fiberboard with wooden pins inserted into it (nails or self-tapping screws can be used).
In order for the pipe to bend evenly, without wrinkles, it must be heated evenly. For this, sand is used. Measure the required amount of sand in advance, pouring it into the pipe, after sealing one end of the pipe with tape. As practice shows, for a 3-meter pipe with a diameter of 20 mm of sand, about one bucket is required.
Then pour the sand from the pipe into the prepared metal container, heat the sand to a temperature of 80-100 degrees ...
...and pour it back into the pipe again. Seal the filling hole with tape so that sand does not spill out of the pipe during operation. Attention: remember that the pipe will get hot, so don't forget to wear protective gloves!
Lay the pipe on a flat surface so that it heats up evenly. For a pipe with a diameter of 16-20 mm, this will take from 2 to 4 minutes.
Then place the pipe in the prepared template and gently bend it centimeter by centimeter in the desired directions. Do not hurry! The result of inaccurate work can be uneven deflections and even ruptures of the pipe along the outer diameter. In those and other cases, marriage is not amenable to correction. At the end of the work, leave the pipe in the template until it cools. After removing the pipe from the template, it will hold the shape you gave it.
If there is a large amount of work ahead, there is a risk that the sand will have time to cool before the work is completed. To prevent this from happening, just in case, keep a building hair dryer on hand in order to locally heat the treated section of the pipe from time to time.
In principle, you can do without heating the sand on the stove at all, using only a hairdryer, but in this case the work will be unnecessarily delayed and, moreover, with careless handling, you can overheat the pipe, and it will simply “float”. And this, again, is not eliminated marriage.
In addition to the method described, there are other ways to bend PVC pipes using other devices, for example, the so-called spring jigs. They are of two types: internal, when the conductor is inserted into the pipe, and external - here the pipe is inserted into the conductor.
You can bend PVC pipes without any tools at all, but for this you must have strong hands and strong fingers. Watch a small but very informative video on this topic below.
PVC pipes are used more and more often as a starting material for the manufacture of various crafts and homemade products. Sometimes masters give them an ornate curved shape and the final work after applying the finish coat does not even resemble the original material. In this master class, we will demonstrate this technique to you.
materials
To bend a PVC pipe you will need:
- the pipe itself;
- strong tape;
- sand;
- funnel;
- metal container;
- gas or electric stove;
- protective gloves;
- knife or scissors;
- saw or hacksaw, as well as sandpaper.
In addition, you will need a pipe bender. In this case, a piece of plywood with dowels planted in the thickness was used.
Step 1. Usually, a gas burner is used to bend pipes, but with its help it is possible to give the pipe only a slight bend and only in a small area.
It is difficult to work out significant segments of such material in this way. It takes a lot of time, moreover, pipes often bend during work, which does not look aesthetically pleasing.
To bend the pipe, as you see in the photo of the final work, it needs to be evenly heated from the inside. For this difficult operation, we use sand. So, first of all, you need to cut a piece of the required length from the PVC pipe and clean the edges of the cut.
Step 2. One end of the pipe must be sealed with tape. The tape should completely cover the hole.
Step 3. With the help of a funnel, sand must be poured into the pipe. Take it so much that the pipe is completely filled with it.
Step 4. Having measured the required amount of sand, pour it into a metal bowl and warm it up well. The sand must be hot.
Step 5. Put on protective gloves on your hands. Using the same funnel, pour the prepared sand back into the pipe.
Step 6. Cover the other end of the pipe with tape. This is necessary so that the sand does not spill out during work.
Step 7. Leave the pipe like this for a couple of minutes. During this time, it will warm up from the inside. The material will become soft and pliable.
Step 8. While the sand is still hot, you can shape the cut piece of pipe into the desired curve or shape. After that, remove the tape and pour the sand back.
Many are wondering how to bend PVC plastic pipes on their own. Indeed, in the process of installing heating and water supply systems, one often has to deal with pipe deformation, but many, not knowing how to do this, acquire a lot of unnecessary components, with the help of which they create bends and branching of the channel. At the same time, they spend on this almost a third of the allocated budget for the creation of the entire pipeline. A more rational and inexpensive way is to bend PVC pipes.
So, in order to bend a PVC pipe intended for a heating and drinking water supply system, it is necessary to remember and put into practice several well-known methods of influencing plastic products using heated air and a vaporous substance. In addition, in independent construction work, there is a way to bend a PVC pipe using an included gas stove. So, about everything in more detail.
As for the manual method of bending plastic pipes, it consists in heating exactly that section of the pipe that will bend. In this case, a home stove can help, or rather, one of its burners. But, using this method of bending plastic pipes, you need to be vigilant and careful, since an open flame can damage not only the pipe, but also the person’s hands. And in more serious cases, lead to disastrous results. Therefore, there is always an alternative to everything that happens, with regards to the methods of bending PVC pipes, including.
Safer ways to create any bend and direction of a pipe intended for water supply are:
1. Plastic pipe can be bent with a hair dryer. To ensure the proper shape of the PVC pipe when it is heated, so that it does not start the melting process, it is necessary to pour into its internal cavity a material that is resistant to elevated temperatures, and whose structure has the form of fine grinding fractions. Such materials include both sand mass and salt mass. Using a construction watering can or funnel, pouring such materials into a PVC pipe will not be difficult. Naturally, one of the ends will need to be closed with a cork or barrier cap. Approximately, to fill a standard (length about 3 meters and a diameter of about 2 cm) plastic pipe designed to create a heating system or a water supply channel, you will need about one bucket of bulk material. Knowing all the calculations, you can purchase everything you need in advance and not worry about whether the available materials were enough or not.
2. Plastic pipe can be bent without the help of a hair dryer. This method involves heating bulk material (sand mass or salt mass) using an oven. To implement the plan, you will need a baking sheet and a preheated oven. After the bulk mass has warmed up to the desired temperature, using a scoop and a construction funnel, it is necessary to pour it into the internal cavity of the plastic pipe. It should be borne in mind that when choosing this method of bending a PVC pipe, you need to have a crow and a metal barrier cover.
An important nuance is the determination of the desired temperature, sufficient for bending plastic pipes, as well as PVC pipes on their own. In this case, you need to think logically. Consider this issue using the example of a water heater. So, the tank heats water, according to the recommendations in the instructions for the product, up to a maximum of 75 degrees Celsius, but it is advisable to adjust the mode and set the heating temperature to 60 degrees. This is necessary in order to avoid the formation of deposits on the walls of the tank during heating at high temperatures. So, making an analysis of the available data, we can conclude that the required heating temperature of the bulk mass must definitely be above 80 degrees. On the Internet, there is information that such masses need to be heated to at least 140 degrees and not more than 170 degrees, since this extreme temperature is considered the melting point of plastic and PVC products.
All methods of bending PVC pipes for water supply systems have been considered, and you need to make a choice only based on your wishes.
And in what ways can bending PVC pipes intended for sewer systems be achieved?
Few people know that such rigid PVC pipes with a large diameter, in general, can be bent. It must be understood that not all types of such pipes lend themselves to the bending process. Moreover, you can only bend the pipe a little, but that's something. In most cases, as practice shows, a plastic sewer pipe with a diameter of 1011 cm can be bent by a maximum of 25% with the help of a technical hair dryer. Do not worry if relief formations in the form of folds appear on the outer surface of the PVC pipe after processing with a technical hair dryer. Such formations do not prevent the passage of masses through it, and also do not create a weakening of the deformed places.
Pipes made of polyvinyl chloride or plastic, which have a diameter of 56 cm, lend themselves to unhindered creation of bends. For bending such products, a technical hair dryer is used or hot bulk materials technology is used. Before the process of creating bends, you need to go through a training exercise. No need to spare materials for honing a skill. Such training will help to achieve a good result at the end of the bending process of the desired plastic product.
The process of bending sewer pipes made of plastic or polyvinyl chloride differs little from the process of bending pipes for heating systems or water supply systems. Initially, it is necessary to heat the bulk material to 80100 degrees Celsius, and then pour it into the cavity of the plastic product. Next, you need to wait a while for the PVC pipe to warm up at the place of the intended bend. After waiting, you can begin to give it the look you need.
Today's construction technologies have reached the level of creating special flexible PVC pipes for sewerage systems. They are produced in different sizes and with different diameters. Therefore, by purchasing such a pipe, it is possible to avoid giving the pipe flexibility properties on its own. But the choice is always yours!
