Non crap plastic glue

From: J.C. Wren <jcwren_at_jcwren.com>
Date: Mon Nov 3 12:41:23 2003

        Glues are moderately sensitive to being matched to the material they're being
used with. If your gear is actually nylon, virtually no glues will work with
it. If it's ABS, you should use ABS solvents/cements. I think PVC and ABS
are pretty interchangable, but I'm not an expert at plastics, by any means.

        As I understand it, there are two types of gluing. Some glues use the
porosity of the material, and "bond" by filling in the small voids. A large
scale example would be epoxying something to a cinderblock. The glue gets in
the voids, and the odd shapes all a structural bond to form. Very smooth
materials do not do well with this.

        Other glues, like for PVC and ABS work by actually dissolving the material,
and forming a molecular bond. Materials like nylon to not lend themselves
well to this.

        Some glues, like Superglue, form a third kind of bond. They don't dissolve
the materials, nor to they fill the interstitial voids. Superglue is also a
very poor structural glue, and not well suited to bonds that are subjected to
cross-loading or shear forces.

        This is just the little bit I know about certain glue characteristics.
Bonding materials is a science unto itself, and while I often don't know what
glue is appropriate, I've learned the hardway which ones don't (well, except
for JBWeld. You can do damn near anything with that stuff).

        --John

On Monday 03 November 2003 11:19 am, chris wrote:
> Since the archives are down, I can't search for this, but I know its been
> discussed here before.
>
> Can anyone recommend a glue for plastic that doesn't suck. Testor's no
> longer makes usable plastic model glue. The tube is labeled as "for
> polystyrene or ABS plastic", but I think scotch tape would hold better
> than this crap will.
>
> SuperGlue (Krazy Glue, whatever the brand on that tube says) doesn't do
> any better.
>
>
> I've got a plastic push gear I'm trying to glue back together, and so far
> three different glues haven't done squat! The last one I tried was some
> brand of a super glue designed to fill gaps and bond most anything to
> anything... yeah right! As soon as the gear was pushed, it snapped at the
> glue line again (after letting it dry all weekend).
>
>
> So what's a good plastic glue that I can buy, and where can I get it?!?
> Damn parental groups worrying about kids glueing their eye lids shut have
> ruined it for us all!
>
> -chris
> <http://www.mythtech.net>
Received on Mon Nov 03 2003 - 12:41:23 GMT

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