Tuesday, October 27, 2009

HIPS TK Stormtrooper - Glue showdown

The following is based on my experiences building a locally (Australian) made TK storm trooper kit moulded using HIPS high impact polystyrene and products that are easily sourced in most Melbourne hobby shops.

One of the problems I realized I would have when I started to assemble my kit was that some of the pieces did not line up perfectly with their counterpart and that any adhesive would need to be pretty good and flexible to deal with the stress when the parts are stretched onto place. Also hips seems to be a bit more brittle than ABS be it lighter and nicer looking in finish. This in my limited experience had both advantages and disadvantages.

When I asked my supplier of the kit (mouldman) what glue I should use with this I was a little supprised when he responded with "selleys superglue" as my experiences with superglue was that it is brittle and hopeless with plastic, but alas it does work, mostly because it's acetone based. But still needing more convincing I purchased every product I could find in both a hardware store and a hobby shop that looked like it could work including superglue.



In no particular order:

A) Plastruck plastic weld
B) Selleys shock proof super glue
C) Selleys super glue in a bottle
D) Revell plastic model cement
E) loctite "all plastic" super glue

I then proceeded to test the product on some of the offcuts from trimming the kit.

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