Ya, I was extending the Reo 6ml bottles (more just to see if I could and how much abuse they would take)...to simply extend a bottle i.e. cut the top off one and the bottom off another and heat weld them together is pretty easy, I just put some tinfoil on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet on the stove top, touched the halves on it till it gets clear and gooey and stick them together...about a 70% success rate but the ones where they didn't leak (or look like crap) the weld holds very good and stays flexible.
Tried a few things today to create my 1/2 bottle and I had success with this method:
Dug out my HD Heat Sealing Tool I used to use to shrink and tighten MonoKote skin on RC aircraft and put it upside down on a glass? or ceramic? coffee cup.
(I didn't think to take pictures while I was doing it until it was a success, but here are a few that kinda explain)
Put tin foil on it then flattened it down on the irons face. Put some scrap pieces of LDPE on it and played with settings and found full bore "HI" was the perfect setting.
The LDPE would turn from milky to clear when it is ready. A rounded section cut out of a bottle will flatten out nice.
Took the cut out 1/2 bottle (minus the top I had also cut out) and pressed the top against some tin foil on the iron after I had a small square section all flat and clear. Once the top edge was all gooey I pressed it into the flat piece and held until it melted together. Trimed off most of the excess and then molded what was left into slightly rounded edges by hand against another piece of tin foil on the heat tool. Cut another piece of LDPE from a
cheap Harbor Freight LDPE bottle and let it flatten out and turn clear. Didn't have enough room to put both that piece and the 1/2 bottle with blank top on the heat tool so I pressed it against the foil until the edges got clear and gooey so it would straighten up any uneven edges then put the piece of the HF bottle back on till it was clear again. Pressed the 1/2 bottle against the clear sheet and held pressure on it till it melted down into the sheet. Let it sit for a bit until I was satisfied that the heat had penetrated good and the edges were all melted into the sheet well.
Trimmed it down carefully and hand rounded the edges against another piece of foil on the heat tool. This left a complete 1/2 bottle that is air tight.
Trying to CA the magnet to the bottle was an exercise in futility so I used some 3M 60 second epoxy that was handy and that seemed to work well. (More like 5 min epoxy in that small of an amount) I can wet my finger and put it on the magnet with the bottle squeezed and it holds the suction until I pull my finger off.
Still waiting for the smaller ID magnets that will go on the squonk tube. Oh, and I forgot to explain that the 14 gauge needle shown in the previous CAD drawing is just to expand the silicone tubing tight to the smaller ID magnet.
Next time I will use a piece of 0.60" LDPE sheet I have for the back (flat) side of the bottle since the thinner 0.025" LDPE from the HF bottle warped inward a little. Edit: It bowed in while cooling because it was sealed and the air cooled.
It holds 6-3/4 oz filled to the brim. The height of the bottle / 510 seems to line up nicely with the board and battery.
It appears I am going to have to make the mod a little wider since the board, battery, and bottle will just fit in the test shell. I had planned on installing 2 partitions 1mm each and this test shell is only 1mm thick instead of the 1.5mm or perhaps even 2mm thick I would like the final version to be.
Edit: battery is turned the wrong way so that is why it's tight
I also determined that one of my wife's curling irons will mold a piece into a nice rounded cross section during my experiments. Also if done quickly, transferring a sheet from the heat tool to a round form works as well. This leaves open the possibility to make a custom bottle or 1/2 bottle from scratch to other lengths or radius using pieces of the cheap HF bottles.
Well, that is all the time I have for experimenting today and probably till next weekend. Work is going to be busy and I have to work in the field this week since I had to let one of my guys go last week. Today I really should have been working on estimating 2 prints I got Friday so I'll have to work on them in the evenings.
