- Hdpe plastic
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
I've been doing some searching on homemade hdpe plastic stuff after they melt it down. So then I went to ebay to do a sold search for scrap hdpe or craft hdpe but found nothing. Is there laws against this or is know one doing it? Because if I can melt it down into a block and sell it for $10 I'm going to.
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There was a machine I was looking at a couple years ago that could sit on your desk. You fed plastic, such as coke bottles (empty), into the hopper and it would produce filament. The filament could then be sold for 3D printers. Cant remember if there was also a post on the forum about it or not, but it looked cool at the time.
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Only problem I can see is once melted how will someone know its HDPE plastic? I could see doing this for the clear natural plastic but not the color ones as too many colors out there...
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
Didn't think of that hobo. But I would people the colors together. Also watched a video on a lady that made a beads from hdpe plastic. Easy to do but tedius and and will take a lot of time. I'm not real creative type I just take crap apart. Haha. But I think I am going to melt some done and put it on ebay just to see what happens.
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this makes me think of when I was a kid scrapping and lead was just 2cents a pound and no real environmental concerns and I used to melt down into molds and make sinkers to sell to everyone to make more than scrap value which now is a huge fine for using lead sinkers or lead shot for that matter
How exactly do you plan on melting plastic?
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Are you goanna do this in your kitchen? Need to post it... I never thought about adding different colors... Create the rainbow!
Metal Recycling Entrepreneur
there is tons of youtube videos on how to do it and what temp. They just put it at the melting temp so there is no fumes then some make a mold out of scrap wood and put in the and clamp another board to the top to make it flat. This idea is up in the air for me because I still have a bunch of other stuff to do and sell.
New Guy
yes hdpe can be recycled at home i have done it with many containers including milk jugs and detergent bottles and 5 gallon buckets. i melt it by shredding the containers in a shredder putting it in the oven at 330-340 degrees farenheit and knead it like dough with oven proof gloves when it melts this will completely mix the flakes of hdpe together to prevent invisible areas of stress between the melted flakes. after this i take the melted blob of plastic and since hdpe is a very thick consistency when melted almost like taffy which is normal it has to be clamped down in a mold with c clamps. after this i wait about an hour or two then remove it from the mold and finish it with a planer to make the surface nice and uniform. some things that may be worth knowing is that the containers must be very clean this will prevent dirt and areas of weakness in the sheet. also dont overheat the plastic milk jugs turn clear when melted and you dont want to heat it too long after it turns clear or is melted this will prevent the plastic from turning yellow and degrading. also its better to stick with the same type of container in the mold for example if your melting milk jugs into a block use milk jugs for the whole thing this is because there is different types of hdpe with different viscositys that may not melt together uniformly. i eventually plan to make a filament extruder which basically extrudes the hdpe into a long plastic wire and than chop it up into pellets this is because pellets will probably melt more uniformly than flakes but its not neccessary to do it this way.
Last edited by funny1048; 11-13-2015 at 06:35 PM.
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