Laughingman wrote:
Aside from material yield is there any reason you did not have it cut out all in one piece?
Would it not be better if you did not have to weld all the pieces together?
Nope, that was the reason. I did however put some thought into this..
The original ABS sheet size (as available from supplier) was 1m x 2m. So I could potentially get one board per sheet, if I did it in one piece. But that would mean a huge amount of wastage. The waterjet cutting would also be marginally cheaper.
Alternatively I could cut only the lengthwise bits and weld them at the tips, which would reduce waste a lot, but I would still need to weld. Since I would still need to weld, I could just as well economise further and squeeze 6 boards out of one sheet.
As for being better, it would be marginally better, but not significantly so, in my opinion.
Solvent welding (methylene chloride) ABS provides pretty good bonds, and with my test samples resulted in substrate failure as opposed to cohesive failure, i.e. the bond is as strong as the base material.
Also, the ABS doesn't play much of a structural role and from a sealing perspective the bond lines are normal to the outer surface, so the edge sealing is still effective.
So the tradeoff was pretty much wastage vs additional effort. And since I did the welding this past weekend I can tell you it took maybe half an hour to complete. I'll take a pic tonight.
