Poor Man's (not so rapid) Prototyping Method for the Fabber-less

Step 6 Preparation of ABS glue

Place the grinder in the box. Take scraps of plastic from cutting out your design and grind them down into powder or smaller bits of plastic. You might want to use pliers instead of your hands to hold the plastic when the plastic gets really small.

Collect the granulated plastic and place it in a bottle. Add a small amount of acetone to the bottle, close the lid and shake. Every now and then, pour out or stick a stick into the bottle and draw out a small amount of goop to check for consistency. It should be more like maple syrup or honey rather than elmer's glue. I like to keep it that consistency because it has a greater ratio of plastic to acetone.

ABS breaks down upon contact with acetone. It becomes goopy and can be used to glue pieces of abs together. This is ideal because as the goop comes in contact with more abs, the acetone in the goop prepares the surface of the abs for gluing by decomposing a little bit of the abs. As the acetone dries, the abs restructures itself. The strength of reformed ABS after being decomposed by acetone is about 75% of the original abs.