Introduction: Roller Welder DIY With the Use of a Soldering Iron and a Clock Gear

To create this simple but very useful home-made tool we should make a roller tip for our vintage simple soldering iron. So we've got the hand-tool for welding polyethylene, PE, polypropylene, PP, or other thin plastic films for the purposes of packing, storing or/and human-finger protection.

Supplies

Soldering Iron, clock brass gear, 5 mm brass rod, fibreboard plywood, steel rule, paper knife, punched plastic sleeves for A4 paper sheets.

Step 1: Making the Roller Tip

To begin with making roller welding tip. Take somewhere a brass rod 5 mm in diameter (or 6 if you have such a soldering iron), 66 mm in length, and a clock brass gear.
We should make in the rod:

  1. a groove for the roller
  2. a through hole for an axis of the roller In my case the roller has 1.77 mm diameter of center hole, so the same diameter of the axis.

To do it, I've used a piece of wood with a 5 mm hole and two clamps to fix a rod. Then saw-cut the central groove with a Dremel-like tool and diamond disc drill. Then drilling the hole... let's make it's diameter slightly less then 1.77 mm, then hammer in the axis - so it is strongly fixed.

Step 2: How to Use. Examples, What for Is It

Now mount the tip in the soldering iron and turn it on to heat.

Other required tools: fibreboard plywood, steel rule, paper knife.

Required materials: punched plastic sleeves for A4 paper sheets. They are made of PP (polypropylene).

Start to do useful things. Lead the roller along the rule to make straight line. Then press the suture by the rule, it cools and cures the joint spots.

In this video up to 4:42 - making the roller tip, then what for and how to use (from 4:42 to the end):

Timing
01:00 Making the roller tip

04:42 What we need to weld

05:01 Strength of suture test

05:25 A4 poster seal in a PP-file

06:05 Fit sized plastic pockets for bank notes (to protect them from our fingers)

07:53 Self-made sleeves for old photo-negatives

11:02 Let's seal our collection of coins in a PP-matrix

12:51 Sort out your small parts by packing them into fit sized plastic bags