Broken Nova Processor acrylic divider

[MattKing]

It looks like this thread is getting kind of stuck - on arguments about glue!

 

[DREW WILEY]

At least it's not glue-sniffing! If that's more to your liking, switch from photography to spray paint "street art".

 

[AgX]

I just tried a trick question on AgX, and he probably figured that out by now. Polypropylene is not glued; it's heat welded.

You failed the test. Polypropylene can be glued, as I described above. This is just the field where those primers are needed.
But of course this is a niche field, for cementic dimension-critical or tiny parts. But big enough for glue manufacturers to offer a variety of solutions. The mass of Polyproylene connections indeed are done by welding, but I never doubted that.

 

[DREW WILEY]

No I didn't. I said it is not glued, not that it cannot be glued, if somebody is crazy enough to do that. Even teflon can be glued is you have the right kit. Right across the street from my office was an industrial pipe supplier that had just about every plastic part you could think of in stock, including noryl pipe, micropipette tubing for medical and university R&D, teflon ball valves over $5000 apiece, chemically resistant drain pipe up to 8 ft in diameter. But heat shaping and heat welding of thick sheets of Polypropylene, like I had done, is routine, and does not involve any hazardous chemicals. Your hypothetical method of trying to chemically glue polypropylene would be far less reliable, given its significant coefficient of expansion and contraction in an application like a sink.
Torch welding, in my case in conjunction with polypropylene corner fillets, forms a single continuous mass of plastic, just like metal welding. It was done by an acquaintance who welded lead nuclear reactor core linings for a living, heavy work - his arms and neck were like tree trunks. But my 3ft by10 ft sink itself was so light that it was made in his shop, and we just hand carried it into my darkroom.
Chemically resistant hypalon roofing is done the same way, whereas liquid hypalon roofing was so damn noxious it could not be even used on a Naval ship deck within US waters - and now not at all. Prior to that, I sold it for paint-on industrial bath linings containing concentrated acids - a far more demanding application than any darkroom sink.
Oh yeah, tiny parts ... not a typical application of polypropylene. It doesn't machine well.

 

[Aidrian Long]

So I picked up a tube of the acrylic bonding agent & I was able to glue the broken piece of acrylic back onto the processor. I filled the compartments with water to check for leaks & to check if the heating elements were working & they do thankfully. I just went out to my darkroom & noticed the water in the processor has frozen over. I’m not sure if I should turn on the heater elements to melt the water or just wait for it to thaw out. Tomorrow the temperature should be above freezing for the first time in a week, so hopefully that should be warm enough. Thanks for all the advice it’s really appreciated

 

[Sirius Glass]

So I picked up a tube of the acrylic bonding agent & I was able to glue the broken piece of acrylic back onto the processor. I filled the compartments with water to check for leaks & to check if the heating elements were working & they do thankfully. I just went out to my darkroom & noticed the water in the processor has frozen over. I’m not sure if I should turn on the heater elements to melt the water or just wait for it to thaw out. Tomorrow the temperature should be above freezing for the first time in a week, so hopefully that should be warm enough. Thanks for all the advice it’s really appreciated

Let it thaw on its own. Another day will not matter and the heater may not in these conditions thaw it out evenly.

 

[pentaxuser]

None of my business what you do but if the Nova is in temperatures where the water in the water jackets have frozen then given that frozen water expands that is potentially very serious for the jackets. I'd either drain the jackets or set the heater to a low temperature such that the water remains above freezing

I hope the current frozen water has not damaged the Nova. As it thaws I'd check carefully for water leaks

pentaxuser

 

[AgX]

I just went out to my darkroom & noticed the water in the processor has frozen over.

So your darkroom is a temporarily unheated shack of some kind. Did you not experience trouble before after freezing temperatures?