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Has anybody ever try to melt down plastic sprue and reuse it for casting?
I figure a double boiler may work. But not sure.
Any input?

you could try, but most plastics involve an irreversible chemical reaction when they are first cast, so I doubt you'll actually get anything out of melting it except for a little sludge and a whole lot of toxic vapor.
And by a whole lot, I mean if you're doing this in bulk you could probably faint and make yourself very ill!

I don't really know what kind of plastic GW uses, but it's also likely to have a significant number of additives that will not react to temperature in the same way as a regular thermoplastic. They may leave the binder to become waste in the pan or airborn toxins.

If it is a single type of thermoplastic and you can find the melting point, you could give it a try, but it seems smarter safer to just get used to resin

the plastics in worked with a process called injection muolding. it means that is not only the temperature that cast the plastics but also the pressure. without a machinery ( and a steel mould ) who press the plastics to tens bar you can't.

sorry for the bad english...

Yeah, looks like GW got the monopoly on the plastic.
Resin, here I come!!

If you still want to reuse your sprues, I run mine through a hand cranked meat grinder then use them for rubble in terrain and basing

I put mine in the plastics recycling collection bin.

I still use my sprue. (One of the greatest resources for Ork players.) I was just pondering if it would be used for personal casting projects. And it may be a big no for that.

Ill agree with lanman, i just use them for basing lol, since to re-use them in moulding you need some high grade gear, that isnt available to most people, let alone knowledge of how to do it without killing yourself

In the past I've used the really small shavings and clippings (mostly from sprues) and put them into a glass jar (baby food jars are great for this) and mixed in a little acetone which dissolves the plastic. I wait till it globs together and pull it out to do some basing. I have been planning to test a theory and use a rough file to make plastic shavings and see if they can be completely dissolved and used for use in simple one-sided push molds. It would require getting the ratio of acetone to plastic just right to get something fluid enough to inject with a syringe or something. I don't know what you're planning to mold, so I couldn't say for sure, but something like this might work for you. You would still need to be careful, acetone is flammable and will irritate your lungs. I leave everything outside until I'm ready to pull it from the mix (although that's only a few minutes).

You can also check out this tutorial [ http://www.the-waaagh.com/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=12725&view=findpost&p=430170 ]on what's referred to as "squash casting". Very useful for replicating small parts like ornamental work you don't want to scratchbuild over and over, but I heavily (like with a mallet heavily) caution you to follow the warning about doing it outdoors, as the fumes are toxic.

Squash casting is where I got the idea to try dissolving the plastic with acetone instead of melting it with a flame. In theory it should work, but I haven't tested it yet, so I cannot vouch for the safety or effectiveness of the technique. Experimentum periculosum, caveat utilitor.

I find that if you grease a pan, and stick them on the pan and sprinkle some sugar on them, that they taste like melted plastic with sugar on them. Not sure where I was going there, but just in case you pondered that at some point in your life, now you know. It ALSO does NOT work as a gasoline substitute. Ive since ruined my car, and have been the laughing stock of the fry grease into bio diesel community as well. Basically my adventures into what to do with these damn things, has ruined my reputation as not only a hobbyist, but as man as well. I feel shame

Blarglord wrote:I still use my sprue. (One of the greatest resources for Ork players.) I was just pondering if it would be used for personal casting projects. And it may be a big no for that.

QFT All my vehicles use sprues as extra girders. I also like to carve them up a bit, you can make spikes, and grab rails too.. Stick two bits of sprue back to back, and you can make cool exhaust cans. I even have carved those big circles you get on some sprues into cool bad moon glyphs, evil suns should work too.

I don't know what I'd do with all those sprues if I didn't play orks! (maybe tank traps?)

They make nice borders for movement trays.

The company Wargames factory recycle old sprues and produce new figure sets from them, you can send them to them and stand a chance of winning some figures...

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/Recycle

lanman wrote:If you still want to reuse your sprues, I run mine through a hand cranked meat grinder then use them for rubble in terrain and basing

I do the exact same thing I saw it in a White Dwarf years ago and picked up a meat grinder at an old farm auction a year or so ago for $2. Excellent help for creating cityfight rubble for terrain/bases.

ukali1066 wrote:The company Wargames factory recycle old sprues and produce new figure sets from them, you can send them to them and stand a chance of winning some figures...

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/Recycle

Thats pretty damn cool. Does that extend to the US as well? I didnt really read through all the details (Ive been found with my foot in my mouth a few times for this lol)

I think they're US based anyway...the store prices on the site are in dollars

You can use them for bases, rubble, or orky konversions.

But I doubt you can melt them, IIRC melting most plastics results in harmful fumes (well, even if it doesn't, like the above posters have mentioned, you need pressure as well as temprature to 'mold' that kind of plastic. Poor pressure gets you the air bubbles and flashing everyone really hates)

Being the crazy ADD kid that I am, I have melted sprue before. It becomes this gnarly glob of plastic goo, that if you've got enough patience and skill, you can sculpt and mold with. I attempted to make some daemons with it and overall they looked kinda like sometyhing from the warp. But they didnt hold together well and i found it hard to make them very detailed. Let alone control what the platic would stick to or not. The fumes were GRRRREAT! though. Everything looked like that show "The mighty boosh". (In truth these fumes are quite noxious!)

I actually use my sprues for when I am green stuffing or sculping, I shave my sprues to the size that I need it and glue it to where it needs to be, its tends to bend and shape nicely when warmed... then apply green stuff to it for detail, works nicely personally.

if you can render a gooey glob, you could probably press-mold some detail pieces by use of a vice grip and sturdy backing, but really chem mask and outdoor vents are a must.

But really, resin. if you are in this hobby and have enough sprue leftover to do things with, you can't be THAT cheap, can you?

Iron Phoenix wrote:But really, resin. if you are in this hobby and have enough sprue leftover to do things with, you can't be THAT cheap, can you?

If you're in this hobby and have one leftover sprue, odds are you can't be cheap...lol.

Sometimes it's about finding a new way to do something though. In my case, I want to find out if it can be dissolved enough to do simple molds so I don't have to mess with the whole resin process just to add a decoration to a single model. I have a friend who wanted his techmarine to wear termie armor (calling it counts as artificer armor) and he asked me to convert the model for her. I knew I was going to need to add some AM deco to do it right and didn't feel like messing with the whole casting process for 3-4 pieces of bling smaller than a pencil eraser. So I started thinking about using a 5-min epoxy putty to make a mold of my original, and seeing if acetone would dissolve the sprue enough to use it to make a simple cast. Heating the sprue to do squash-casting is some serious toxic fumes. Acetone isn't something you want to go around huffing, but it's not going to require breaking out haz-mat gear to be around.

Grey sprue is fine for girders, rubble etc.
What i have problems with is the transparent green sprue from blast markers.
It is hard, brittle and just a pain to work with. Filing leaves scratch marks on it and it just won't do what I want! :(
Does anyone have tips for this stuff, or do I just forget it?

Heated over a lighter or candle until soft you can strecth sprue for coms ariels or cables. Or I made this with plasticard and sprue

Melting down and casting with it? Nope.
Thermo-set plastic. It actually releases toxic fumes upon melting. Not really recommended for extended lifespans.

I just bung mine into the recyc bin (our council recycles ALL plastics)

One cool usage is to mixure plastic with liquid glue to make some kind of putty.......Each company makes different mixures to produse plastic for casting their models , if one model has fitting issues one way to fill in the gaps is to use this mix of an old liquid glue and very small sprue parts from the same model.The glue will melt the plastic and can be aplyied on the models surface with a brush , once dried it will have the same tecture as the model and can be safely sanded and handled in any way....
First grind or cut very very small pieces of plastic (so the glue can melt them easy)
Then stir
You can make the mixure as thick as you like but dont overdo it
If the mix isnt toooooooo thick you can save it for future use it will not dry out

I usually glue my models(with fitting issues) from the start with this mixure for better results and so that I wont use much putty later.