Annealing Plastics

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A process of altering the mechanical properties of plastics by heating them over their glass transition temperature and allowing to slowly cool down.

Annealing can have different effects on different polymers. In case of the polyamide family, according to tests ran by Hoffman Tactical, it makes the plastic less prone to creep. In case of PLA, it facilitates recrystallization, raising the tensile strength a bit and the temperature resistance to a great degree. In the general case it relieves the internal stresses introduced during extrusion, which leads to warpage and shrinkage.

PLA / PLA+ is generally considered to be impractical to anneal for most frames due to warpage and shrinkage. Although there has been anecdotal accounts of packing frames into salt / sand during the heat annealing process which had minimized annealing.