Mommy LOOOOK! I welded GI-Joe to your toy. Now he's anatomically correct. :-)

GO JOE!

Maxxofor

@OMG! Ponies!: Yeah, but don't you need to plug it into BOTH holes of the outlet for it to really melt things?

Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity

@dufus: Yeah, I had something like that when I was a kid. It just spins and the plastic tabs melt and "glue" stuff together, but it was a cheap brittle plastic that just snapped apart.

Kaiser-Machead's WALL-E fetish

There was a toy like this back in the 80's... you used it to build cars. (Speed welder or something like it..)

As I recall, it wasn't that popular. The "weld" was pretty weak, and the toy you ended up building wasn't all to durable.

dufus

Look! Now your glasses have bicycle reflectors!
Look! I made one giant remote of all the remotes in the house.
Look! Now the can opener has a dinosaur head coming out of it.
Look! I welded all the Legos I could find... now I need more Legos!
Look! I welded Barbie to your iPhone!
Look!..............

fluf

@Curves: I used to do that when I was a kid with a lighter and a c-clamp. At least this way the kids will learn how to use a tool. Or boil their dog's eyeball. Either way, fun is had by all.

Hectorvex

I can see it now, Bwrbie head welded to GI Joes body, welding into T-Rexs belly. This remind me of Syd (the mean kid next door) from Toy Story.

Curves

Not to mention all those lovely warm plastic odours they are going to breath in! This thing is insane!

ecobore

Who says the kid is going to use it to fuse plastic. It's long and pointy. Just right for probing things.

Like the electrical outlet.

OMG! Ponies!

Actually this is not a new product. How it works is that plastic tip spins, you apply it to the seam between 2 plastic parts, and the friction melts the plastic rod and holds the parts together. The plastic rod is made out out of a plastic that melts at a very low temp. You get a whole bunch of rods to use, they go fast.

ryanrule

When I was 8, my parents gave me a Weller soldering station and a Heathkit alarm clock kit. Some would question whether or not a kid should have a soldering iron at 8, I am glad my father did not.

Lizard_King

@OMG! Ponies!: Fried Junior for dinner.

J. Nadeau

Yeah, I had one of these toys (in 1972, if I recall correctly) and it was indeed called the SpinWelder. When I ran out of the plastic welding rods, I stuck all sorts of stuff on it. Any plastic rod within reach was instantly welded onto something else.

It, along with my Erector Set (no jokes - it's too easy) was probably responsible for my love of all things mechanical.

y_chromosome

The perfect accessory for plastic animal toys. Imagine your joy if, as a child, you'd had the ability to create tigeraffes and gorillaphants.

Killjoy

@Git Em SteveDave displays attention-grabbing vanity: Let's have Junior shove it into the grounding hole and see what happens.

OMG! Ponies! Amazing Bacon Drinks

@Hectorvex: same here I fused stuff together all the time, I got my first zippo when i was 11....fun times....fun times... :)

superbryant

@Killjoy: Do you know what you get if you mix an elephant with a rhino?

Elephino.

Aoi

ben heck smiles

takoattack

@ryanrule:

Agreed. I had a toy like this in the 70s, called "Spinwelder"

It was one of the coolest things I ever had, but definitely created fumes that probably have shortened my life.

Matthew77

Must... Buy.... QUICKLY!!!!! Need Car..... Must Buy!

I want one so bad, that looks like so much fun,
Dad: Bobby do your homework
Bobby: I dont want to
Dad: Do I need to introduce G.I. Joe to mr. Melty?
Bobby: Please NO, I will do my homework!!!!

vinnyr

"Sorry Doctor. I thought he would only use it for welding his little plastic toys. I never thought he would use it to poke [insert defenseless little loved one or favorite pet's name here]'s eye out."

apeguero

Will It Blend?

aaj111

@Matthew77:
Yup. I had one when I was a kid. This was around 1995. It was a car kit that you could smash up then rebuild with the spinwelding system. Definitely smelled bad, but it was fun to be able to send the toy down a flight of stairs and have it completely blow apart by the time it got to the bottom.

knyghtryda

PSH, when I was 8, we were welding metal! All we had was a car battery, some wires and a crochet needle! Didn't need no fancy-schmancy kit!

These days I use methylene chloride for welding plastic - fun stuff! Kids love it*

*don't ever, EVER let your kids play with it.

lpranal

I never knew I wanted to learn to weld until now. Something to add to my "Bucket List".

Curves

@Curves: It's not hard -- it's just hard to make it pretty.

GeekyNerdGuy

@Curves: Here's a secret, you already know how to weld, you just haven't done it yet!

NCMO

Sweet. Can't wait to get this for my nephew.

DMF

@Curves: Oh please. I know that's been on your list ever since you saw "Flashdance"

OMG! Ponies! Amazing Bacon Drinks

@Aoi: Oh lordy... Nice one. Another bad joke to add to my arsenal.

Killjoy

Hell, I want one of these!

Personally, I think we need more toys that stimulate inventiveness in children. Things like real chemistry sets and toys that had a real chance to injury. And yes, while somewhat tongue in cheek, I really do mean that.

BrandonW

SpinWelder! Yep, I had one of these in the 70s. It was a pretty cool toy for a kid, actually. There were also plastic rivets you could use to attach cardstock "skins" to the things you made.

CSX321

@Curves:
I've welded plastic before. (with professional equipment from Fein Tools and such... worth thousands of dollars)
No matter now careful you are, it still looks crappy. Specially because temperatures at the tip are fairly high and you have to use plastic welding rods. Rods are messy, unpredictable in flow and cool too fast so you do not have working time.
Best method for welding plastics is sonic welding. But that's and industrial process in itself.

For the DIY in all of us, you can weld plastic by using a soldering iron (5 ~ 10 watts) and connect it to a dimmer. Adjust the voltage until you get the tip to the right melting point.
Too cool... it takes for ever.
Too hot and plastic becomes brittle, bubbles up and burns.
You want to get it to the point that it soften it and makes the plastic smooth and strings out like mozzarela.
You have to clean the tip often, plastic left in the tip burns up and messes up the rest of the work.

If you need to fill a gap, break a piece of plastic from a section you do not see from the outside. Same material means a compatible weld and fusing.

This technique works for soft plastics, (propylene, nylon, nalgene, etc...).
Hard plastics such as resins, polycarbs, acrylics are better suited for superglues and epoxies.

Ciao.

:)

aec007

I grew up with miniature tools like this, lawn darts, trampolines without any safety precautions, riding in the front seat of a car with no safety seat, our parents smoked like freight trains....

If someone sues over this - it will be absolute proof that the US has become a bunch of wimpy little babies.

Diskoboy

They're all right. It's harmless. I had one growing up and never hurt myself. I think designing toys to be safe is important but c'mon, anything sharper than a golf ball and we're wagging our fingers at these developers designing toys to be creatively inspiring.

If a thousand children play with and enjoy it and ONE dumb-ass kid wonders what it'll be like to weld his eye shut; lets just get it over with and pack him in pillows for the rest of his life.

scandalmonger

Awesome. Toys of the 1970s are returning. I had one of these.

banned4life

I know of four different ways to weld plastic:

1. Solvent welding, where you introduce something like acetone to dissolve the plastic at the intended bond site, and once the solvent evaporates away the plastic resolidifies (like you'd use for PVC water pipes).

2. Spin-welding (which was actually a new one for me), where a plastic with a low deflection temp is spun against a fixed surface to generate localized heat without the use of an actual heating tip.

3. Extrusion/rod welding, where you are actually using a hot-tip welder, and either manually feeding a plastic rod into the weld joint (looks like crap), or feeding it through an extrusion device (looks _MUCH_ better).

4. Sonic welding, where a metal tip is vibrated at a very high frequency, such that it can actually cause plastic to melt by vibrative friction (similar to the spin-welding concept, except that you can use this to spot-weld two large flat pieces together, without having any stems or pre-drilled holes).

I've only ever done solvent-welding, but I did get to see a demonstration of some extrusion/rod welders, and once got to see someone actually fabricating parts with a sonic-welder (note that they emit a very high-pitched whine, so people with good high-end hearing might envision trips to the dentist or fingernails being scraped across chalkboards when one of these is being used).

@aec007:
Different plastics require different welding techniques. Some plastics have actual melting points, where they go directly from solid to liquid (where you can pour it like water). Plastic like ABS does not (they just get gooey like chewed gum), but ABS does absorb moisture. If you're getting a honeycomb effect when you melt it, chances are it's a hygroscopic plastic that you forgot to dry before welding with it, and you'll never get an optimum weld (even though you might not see the bubbles from the outside, if you cut through the weld you'll probably see pin-prick bubbles that weaken the plastic on the inside).

And from your description, I'd guess you were using a rod-welder, which sucks bigtime compared to a true extrusion welder (think along the lines of how a good hot-melt glue gun works).

Purple Dave

its a frickin hot glue gun wow...

Arcticfox400

This is nothing new. I had this in the 70's. Google a toy called Spinwelder. I can still remember the smell of burning plastic. It was pretty cool at the time, and I don't recall welding any GI Joes together.

hg_gizmo

Guys it's likely to be an ultrasonic welder and not a thermal welder.

machtzu

Return of SpinWelder!

[www.inthe70s.com]

Kspray

yea seriously, what's the difference between this and a ratshack $10 soldering iron? i can weld lego's just fine as is today!

krystar