Hobie - Kc Welder Pro With Rod Stock - 72097001

This little welder was purchased to complete a project for a customer of my fab shop. We made a steel table for them but it had some plastic funnels that had to be modified for their application. There are epoxies and adhesives for plastic, but just like steel, the best joining option is welding. Which do you have more faith in, stitches or band-aids? For a serious cut I'm going for stitches. For connecting two pieces of weldable material I will go for a weld every time over a glue.The design of this welder is head and shoulders over over similar designs (like Harbor Freight). On plastic you have to push the two materials together and weave them to make sure you get a good joint. And it's a serious push. Not just using the weight of the welder tip. The HF welder is basically a soldering iron with a little brass or steel welding foot on the end. When you push that into the plastic it will slowly start to flex and permanently bend and deform. Eventually as you bend it back to straighten it up you will break something. And then it goes in round filing cabinet and you have to start over with another welder. Not this one.My project was roughly 10 ft. of weld joint, with all of the material being 1/4" thick LDPE. On any plastic weld joint it is better to weld both sides of the joint (top and bottom) for best results. So that meant I had 20 feet of welds to make on 1/4" thick LDPE. Not an easy or fast task to complete. Through it all, I welded for about 5 hours with this welder. The process wouldn't have taken near that long on thinner material. At some point I started using a Wagner heat gun to preheat the weld joints. That sped things up quite a bit and got better results at the same time.Amazon has several plastic welding rod options, including the LDPE rods that I purchased and used. The 3/16" diameter rods are a perfect fit for the feed port on this welder.I'm right handed so here is how I used this welder. I control the welding rod in my right hand and held the welder with my left hand. I would start feeding the welding rod at the furthest point and pull the welder to the left. My best results came from light pressure on the welder tip to the joint, pushing the welding rod through the welder, and pulling the welder through the joint. Feeding the welding rod will push the welder along on its way without under heating or overheating the joint. The feed port on the welder head is angled that way so as you push on the welding rod to feed it in, the welder naturally wants to move back in a pull direction. I'm talking about pushing and pulling weld directions like we're talking about MIG or stick welding. By laying down 4-6" long beads using the welding rods, and then going back over that with weaving across the bead from side to side in a push direction to the joint I got excellent results. So I'm pulling the welder while feeding the welding rod in, then I stop feeding the welding rod and weave back across that welded area and weave it side to side across the joint while going in the push (opposite) direction. Distortion wasn't an issue for me with this technique.Something else that will help is to keep the tip clean. Between welds there will always be a little residual plastic in and on the tip of the welder. While it's sitting there not being used, those little remnants will char, even if you immediately unplug the welder. Those little charred particles will get embedded in your next weld and make it look like hell. I'm not sure how much in affects the integrity of the weld but I don't think it's helping it any. When I'm done welding I leave the welder plugged in for 15 minutes and just let it smoke while it gets to maximum temperature. It's not going to fill the room with smoke or anything but it will have a little wisp of smoke as the remaining plastic burns off. After that 15 minutes I use a 3/16" wooden dowel to push out any plastic left in the feed port and smear it on a piece of trash cardboard. A 22 caliber bronze or brass gun cleaning brush fits in that port perfectly to clean it out like a pipe cleaner while it's still hot. After doing that I use a small bronze bristle brush (available on Amazon - look for gun cleaning brushes and you'll see these toothbrush looking items) and clean all of the outside surfaces of the welding tip. The bronze bristles won't scratch or otherwise damage the hot bronze welding tip. After I'm done cleaning everything up I'll unplug the welder and let it cool off slowly for 10 or so minutes until it's not too hot to touch. Then I'll put it away.I looked for but did not find a similar welder that had a pistol grip shape instead of a screwdriver shape like this one. You have to put some considerate, sustained down pressure on the weld joint while you are welding. The screwdriver/straight design is not very ergonomic for doing that over an extended period of time. A pistol grip or at least partially angled grip would make a huge ergonomic difference for bigger welding jobs. This straight design welder will let you get into smaller places than one with a pistol grip or angled grip. But where space isn't cramped around your weld joint an angle on the grip would be a real asset. I will continue to look for an angled grip welder but this straight one will definitely do the job.

This tool gets plenty hot enough for plastic welding. It has already saved me hundreds of dollars on the farm.

One of the HDPE water tanks on our sailboat developed a crack along a seem and we looked at a number of ways to try and repair it. A new tank cost $350.. plus another $200 just to ship it. While trying to find options to repairing our tank I ran across a YouTube video of someone using this to repair a kayak and thought I'd give it a try. I purchased some white HDPE welding rod from Amazon for around $10.00 and received what I'm sure is a lifetime supply. I've done plenty of welding jobs over the years but never tried to weld plastic. I cleaned up the tank by sanding it and just jumped in with this tool. I was very surprised how easily this worked and what a great repair job I ended up with. I was able to not only repair the crack but was able to add much more material for added strength and the tank is absolutely water tight.

This plastic welding tool is worth the cost to do repairs on our kayaks. I have an autistic son that accidentally dropped our tandem kayak while walking it ftom the lake to the truck. Watched tons of YouTube videos on various plastic welding tool and compared each. Other plastic welding tools are way less than this one cost but majority of the others tend to bend after a single use. Learned quickly how to use this plastic welding tool with the plastic welding sticks through a feeding hole on the iron tip.The only downfall I have with this product is the shipping time. Took quite the whole week and a half to get it delivered. Hence, reason for 4 stars.This product is definitely well recommended over the other welding tools priced way lower than this. If you go that avenue, just remember that you get what you pay for. Low price means low quality... short life span of the tool... whereas this will definitely come in handy and always ready for use, just as long as you keep it clean and properly maintained.

I bought some green ldpe rod and this little iron to fix some holes in my old town canoe. It worked perfectly! Previously I had bought the old town epoxy patch kit, which has fiberglass material and a two part epoxy. The problem is, nothing sticks to a polyethylene canoe hull. The epoxy patches stayed in place for about 3 years, but started peeling around the edges right away. Eventually I was able to grab a corner and peel them off like an old bandaid. After some reading it looked like welding was the way to go for this fix. The process is very similar to soldering. You need to get the work piece hot and melting and then melt the new material into it and blend it together. After a few minutes working on each hole they looked great and after a few trips to the lake there is no indication that the repair will fail. It's perfect!

Bought it to weld broken headlight tabs on atv. It worked great. I only touched it to my finger once, but swiftly moved my finger away from it as I am a relatively quick learner... The power cord is thick and the tip is heavy-duty. It won't bend out of shape when pressure is applied to it, unlike the ones sold by ....freight. It appears to be a "only need to buy it once" welder- the apparent high quality presents a lifetime quality tool. I'm a multi-tradesman and have an incredible amount of tools which are crucial for my lively hood - I try to never buy inferior tools because I realize the value in not having to replace poor quality tools.