In our makerspace we melt recycling flakes to sheets by using a furnance and a spring powered metal form. The size of the plasticsheets is limited by the furnances inner dimensions but for some applications, we need bigger ones. So this project is about a machine which heats one side of a pair of sheet and presses them together afterwards to get a molten connection between them.
We made a simple melting test with a torchlight which heated up a metal profile. The sheets have been pushed against the heated profile. After a while we removed the profile and pushed the sheets against each other.
The connection between the sheets was okay but could be stonger if we would use some sort of more professional machine-process. So, lets build a machine....