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I have not tried, but i did a google search and there are a few youtube videos, and a good number of research papers, looks like you may need a good source of citrus peels, (perhaps you have a nearby juice bar or orange/grapefruit juice making company, and see if you can get them to give you the leftover rinds/peels. if not it can apparently be extracted from the Mint plant too. but i do hear you need a fair amount of peels/mint to make much limonene. here is a pretty good paper on it. https://sites.uci.edu/chem52labs/files/2016/10/M52LA_Exp5_F16UP2.pdf

I usually just stir it now and then, and the bubbles come out. later on when im going to work with it, its susally pretty bubble free. i dont kneed it, atelast until ive dried it a bit, my favorite state to work with it in is when its kinda thick like a gumdrop or gummy bear, i then put that into molds and apply under 130-150F (it bubbles at higher temp.)

sent you an email reply. but here is a public one too. D-limonene is just one of the essential oils found in citrus peels. although i hear there is a terpene in lavender oil that works on eps just about the same. this year i embarked in using it on dirty, dusty, food stained plastics, and while you wont get a perfect end result its pretty good. i have found the EPS and limonene will float on water, so you can pour several cups of water in, to the bucket first. and then pour in the limonene, and as you dunk in styrofoam alot of the dirt and other stuff falls out to the water layer on the bottom. also makes the limonene go a but further because as it gets thicker and thicker with eps, you can still dunk/coat new eps.

yep when fully hard its like any other hard plastic. (feels kinda like how dice feel)

I hear lavender oil can also work. but have not tried it. my current work involve adding some water to the bucket, to allow the PS and limonine to float on it, which lets it deal with more of the dust and dirt and other dirty waste streams. dirt falls out to the bottom and can be dumped/composted

yes. a little more brittle than action figures, but over the span of about a month or two in good ventalation unless suepr thick (like more than a inch thick) they will harden to a resin like plastic hardness.

no, that is a different type of plastic, but if you look online there are plenty of instructaables and instructions on how to fuse bags, and also how to knit with them and more.

replaced the broken link with a new one.

yes, im vaguely looking into both extrusion and injection of the PS and D-limonene. im also interested in seeing if additives such as butylated rubber particles in it to see if i can make HIPS plastic at home and if so can we print with it.

I believe this article was a influence on some of my initial research for a use for extra styrofoam. https://www.instructables.com/id/Recycling-Styrofoam-EPS-Into-Castable-Styrene-Plas/

Indeed the Laquer thinner was interesting, it is indeed a dough like consistency, yes it does end up crusting over and bubbling up inside, so all my tests did also puff up. but indeed was one of the more interesting side avenues i wandered down in my playing with PS. Yes painting should be fine once the solvent is out, although some spraypaints have a solvent that will soften the surface, and some model paints may too but the melting may pop some surface bubbles, but would make the paint stick really well. old classic snap and glue plastic kids models are all made out of injected polystyrene.

maybe, i suspect it would hotglue gun melt pretty well once a majority of the solvent has evaporated.

air trying to come in.

a thin enough tube should prevent the water/syrup from flowing out. be sure to stop any leaks where air can get in. you should only get about a tablespoon out before the vaccuum at the top is great enough to hold the water in.

very nice, i bet the combo of wax paper and my pasta roller machine (if i can find the crank) would be great for making small sheets of the stuff. must say if you have been using acetone, i can totally recommend the upgrade, its about the same price, and so much nicer to work with a clean lemon scent than the fowl stuff. although i guess ive done alot with worse. and the advantage of bad smelling solvents are you know and avoid breathing them more. then again the limonene appears to be pretty safe, (im sure there are limits and things yet to be found about balance/irritation so better to be safe.

very cool i will need to look into this. its amazing how little information there is out there on this. i can see by the comments i had at the Maker faire, and on this instructable, is that lots of folks have experimented, with polystyrene and everything form napalm alikes, and just wow watch it melt.. it was still very hard to get much info on how to melt it, how to use it, what would work, so i think ive only just brushed on what we all can do if we keep up with it and keep sharing.

vaccuum does not really help the molding process. its great for non volatiles but if you lower the pressure on things that can boil. they tend to do it. i have found you can pop some of the bubbles by pulling a vaccuum and then releasing, but mostly just shifts or causes the whole blob to swell up and then wrinkle when it slumps back.

i would mostly agree, yes acetone, mek, toluene, all are a bit flammable and volatile i too would avoid working on them eound sparks or flame, but in general all the heating is done days or weeks into the drying procces and the D-limonene is far less volitile and far less explosive.

not necessarily, the lemonine under heat does break down but at a considerably higher temp than boiling water i recall its in the 400F [point or so, and the styrene ignites at about that temp too if i recall correctly. but the mix of the 2 is more liquid at 200F which is pretty much the boiling point of water, using boiling water may work great for softening it and even for getting some of the limonene to evaporate out. and worst case you wind up with a mix of water limonene and styrene and later on have extra bubbling due to the water... it might not work well. but it should be pretty safe to try with the maker goop as is described above.

yeah ive seen the densifiers, and there are some companies that are buying and grinding and dying the blocks and re-extruding them into picture frames and other stuff. but as for heat alone, yes and no, once its dencified perhaps, but before that its so insulative, its hard to get anything but the surface to a melting temp. the solvent super lowers the glass transition point too in my processes listed above, which is nice so i dont have to go to the scorching/degradation point of the goop.

perhaps, i have not tried. if you do let us know how it goes. i may give it a try sometime.

good idea on the shaker/vibrator, althoguh it does it on its own over time. but would probablty help with bigger faster batches. ive spread the instructable to a few recycle sites, and to hackaday, so i suspect i will soon get some advice from more folks like Nile Red and others. im wondering if there is any sort of catalyst that can break down the solvent faster/safely or some sort of dying agent. i did some tests with toluene, xylene, naphtha.... and agree, while some of those were roads i went down to see what the degassification/drying out was like.. i will likely avoid all of them or at worst use them as small additives if i find a great benefit.

good idea! I just so happen to have a thrift store hand crank pasta machine i've been keeping around for sculpey or other non food use. might be tricky to gage when the insides are thick enough to not squirt or something. but its an idea. someone else suggested a hot press or panini machine or possibly a old waffle maker. but is have to hack them to be low enough temp to not burn the polystyrene.

I have not, but when all the solvent has evaporated, it feels looks acts and burns like polystyrene. feels like those old snap and glue airplane models from my youth (most of those were all injection molded polystyrene. Vacuum does not really help, it causes the solvent to bubble up, you might be able to make faster harder castings by pulling a small low pressure and heating it then. to get the solvent to leave faster, but you still risk having a extra bubbly. or extra wrinkly verizon. ive tried a bunch of different things with my vacuum chamber. if there were no volatiles in it it might help.. but as a general rule no.

As for any chemical equations, not really, there is a link on the last page above to a calculator that my 20 years out of college brain was able to grock only a little of whats going on when a solvent does its magic, but the answer is do i have a forumula? not particularly, its just that as simple as. Polystyrene is soluble in d-limonene, just like how salt is soluble in water, no real chemical composition change, just gave pretty much gave it enough lubricant to slide around into the solution, once it dries out it turns back to a solid. or think of it as a melted chocolate bar, may not have the squares, but when you cool it off its still chocolate. may have a different temper, and or texture which is also true of other solvents and EPS

no there is no chemical change to the polystyrene, it is just dissolving the bonds between the molecules. there is a bit of pentane sometimes bubbled into the plastic to make it expand but most of all of that escapes long before it gets to you.its more like salt dissolved in water, when you dry the water out you get the salt back. Acetone itself gives off a lot of fumes and they are not great for you, which is why i wound up going with the D-limonene, as of now there are no known health risks for some breathing exposure to limonene fumes although i do take some precautions to make sure i'm not inhaling too much of them.

easiest thing to do is add a black disposable #6 PS plastic picnic plate or solo cup. takes about a week to fully harden with acetone, depending on how thick it is, the eps dries out on the surface making the middles a little harder to dry.

over the last year ive tinkered with a bunch of solvents, to degasify EPS, and work with the resulting goop.. here is my instructable using D-limonene instead of acetone, acetone is fast, but you end up with a bubbly/white end result. limonene is slower to dry, but much nicer to be around. https://www.instructables.com/id/Recycling-Styrofoam-EPS-Into-Castable-Styrene-Plas/

Sadly, i don't have any IOS devices so someone else will need to help you with that.

Thanks for enjoying and sharing my photo! great instructable too!

i keep thinking if someone produced a bunch of these and had them all tie into some cloud based storage with synchronized time and gps location, it would make for a great way, to watch for and track meteorite impacts.

I know its hard when you are mad, but remember the be nice policy! Hardness of glass vs steel, should be fine, although id suggest people test it in a small area first just to be sure there is not some sort of coating. and indeed i woudl not use it on modern fiberglass tubs. but older cast iron ones with ceramic there is a good chance the luster is already gone.

id suggest using bead chain (like you use on a cieling fan pull) keeps it from getting twisted up. and wont burn through like rope would

What are you doing with your waste water? stainless contains chromium, which when electrolysed turn into cancerous chromates. you should not dump the water, you should pour it into a wide flat container and evaporate it down to a sludge and turn that into your local hazardous materials site.