Health & Environmental Research Online (HERO)


Print Feedback Export to File
5736348 
Book/Book Chapter 
The problem of stress cracking in heated tool butt welded tail lights made of PMMA and ABS 
Potente, H; Brussel, A; SOC PLAST ENGINEERS INC 
1996 
SOC PLASTICS ENGINEERS 
BROOKFIELD CENTER 
SOCIETY OF PLASTICS ENGINEERS TECHNICAL PAPERS 
42 
1292-1296 
English 
WOS:A1996BH28W00215 
In the production of tail lights for cars, the cover in polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) is welded into a housing made of acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) by means of heated tool butt welding, The most frequent cause of failure in tail lights is the formation of stress cracks. Each year this entails costs which run into millions of deutschmarks.The factors responsible for-the stresses that lead to cracking are shown and localised on the basis of studies conducted on samples taken in part from tail lights. The way in which the heated tool butt welding process influences sensitivity to stress cracking is highlighted on the basis of welding tests on PMMA and ABS sheet. In addition to this, measurements are conducted of the temperature profile during the heating phase, thereby permitting a thermo-mechanical analysis of the materials, and the sheet is annealed in order to reveal the origins of the stress build-up. Finally, evidence of the stress build-up and the cracking effects that were established on the test sheets is also found in tail lights. 
54th Annual Technical Conference of the Society-of-Plastics-Engineers - Plastics: Racing into the Future (ANTEC 96) 
INDIANAPOLIS, IN