Styrene

[Anonymous]

Anyone know a good place to start lookin to get info on styrene molding?

A few of the questions I have...
How can you tell if plastic pieces are styrene? I have a ton of bits left over from various coupler upgrades and such.
Can styrene from building kits be reused?
Where's a good place to buy the materials needed?

thx,
Rob

[Anonymous]

Rob, There are books out on working with styrene that would be available at a hobby shop alongwith a good selection of styrene. Also if you are looking for sheets of it, The plastic For Sale signs that are found in Wal-Mart or dicount stores are the same type of plastic and ar cheeper than a hobby shop depending on the thickness and shape you need. A nother good place to find it cheek is to look in your local Yellow Pages Phone book and look for plastic distributers. From them can be bought many fifferent size, shaped and thickness's of there scrap cutoffs which are usually sold to us buy the pound for not much. Not knowing what you plan to build..........but yes you can reuse the left over pieces from kits to build something else. That's a very common practice in the modeling world. If you let use know what you are trying to build, we can most likely help you more. Hope I helped...........Jamie

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. The hobby shops around here are all dedicated to dried flowers and have train stuff just so they can lure people like me in and hopefully get me to buy some dried flowers.
What I was actually looking for is styrene molding. I need to make a number of parts. The question about reusing the old stuff was more along the lines of "can it me remelted and pored into a mold?" I have however found a bit of information about molding and now know it can't. :(
I'm still looking for any good books on stytene molding (not just using the sheets). If anyone can help there?

[Anonymous]

Hey Rob, if you are going to make parts, are you sure you want to use plastic and mot resin or white metal? Those are the most common types of part molding for modeling. If you get Model RR Mag., this process was described in the May 2002 issue and is pretty simple to do. To mold parts out of plastic would require a injection machine to force the plastic into the mold. Complicated stuff and not in the average persons price range either. I do have a book called "How To Cast Small Metal and Rubber Parts" (work for resin too) by William A. Cannon, that explains how this is done covering simple molds to spinning the mold for the metal parts. Hope I'm helping a bit. If any more questions come about, I'll do my best to answer. I have a friend who is a Model Maker by profesion for a archatectua(sp?) Co. So I get surrounded by this cind of thing.........Jamie

[Anonymous]

Rob, If you are looking for srrip styrene for building moldings and such, chech these people out.........EVERGREEN SCALE MODELS INC. 18620-F 141st AVE. NE. Woodinville, WA. 98072 1-877-376-9099 fax # [phone] no e-address This is the strip plastic you find in the hobby shops along with PLASTI-STRUT, but I don't have info on them...........Jamie

[Anonymous]

Thanks, I'll have to look for that book. I just got to read the May issue of MRR and that article is the kind of info I'm looking for. but I'd like more detailed step by step instructions on how to do it.
What I need to do specifically is make plastic gears for some experiments I'm working on. I haven't been able to find anyplace that will sell them in quanitys of less than 1000 and I don't need nearly that many.
l8r,

[Anonymous]

Well, what type/size gears are you needing? a lot of times you can salvage them from old clocks, other powered devices, etc. Do you really require them to be plastic? I have no idea what you are building, but improvisation is the handymans best tool. If you let us know what it is you are trying to create, perhaps we could offer more useful advice.
Todd C.

[Sperandeo]

Hi Rob,

Try Small Parts Inc. for the gears you want, Web site www.smallparts.com. This company have a variety of gears and you can buy as few or as many as you need. It's a great source for specialized or hard-to-find materials and tools as well.

Good luck,

Andy Sperandeo
MODEL RAILROADER Magazine