Articles - Gain More Adhesive Knowledge - Gain More Adhesive Knowledge

Taking Advantage of the Various Forms of Hot Melt Adhesives

Due to the fact that hot melt adhesives are solid products they can take many forms, and this is one of their virtues. The adhesive’s form can lead to production advantages and opportunities that are not possible with conventional liquid adhesive...
Polyurethane Prepolymers in Wood Laminates: Convenient Performance

Polyurethane adhesives exhibit excellent bond strength and toughness, but the inherently toxic chemicals used in their formation have rightfully caused concern...
When the Stress is Impact

The ability of an adhesive joint to withstand a sudden load is of interest in a wide variety of applications. The automotive and the electronics industries are just two of the major adhesive markets that place a high value on impact resistance.
Choosing Adhesive Bonding Over Other Fastening Methods - Weighing the Options

This article addresses the process of choosing a method of joining. In many applications, several joining methods are possible. These include welding, brazing and soldering, mechanical fastening, and adhesive bonding...
Understanding UV / Light Cured Adhesives

UV or light curing is an extremely convenient production technique for the polymerization of adhesives through the use of a lamp of certain wavelength. Single component adhesives that cure using UV or visible light provide what is referred to as...
Sprayable Adhesives for Ease of Application

Thin adhesive films can be tricky to apply, but sprays can be a user-friendly means of doing so. However, conventional adhesive compositions are not always suited to this - and even if they are, it often takes lots of volatile solvents to propel them...
WOOD GLUES

Adhesives for bonding wood have been around for literally thousands of years. The very first ones were natural gums and plant resins. Native Americans used adhesives derived from buffalo hoofs and animal fat. Some of the earliest wood adhesives used...
Playing Rough: When Clean is Not Enough

Surface preparation is well known as a key factor for effective bonding, but often this is only thought of as cleaning and priming...
Selecting and Using Contact Adhesives

Adhesives and sealants often provide multiple functions for the end-user. These functions often overlap, blurring the boundaries between the two...
Security Tapes and Labels

Unfortunately, security has become a big business. Whether aimed to prevent product counterfeiting, tampering of human consumables, spoilage, misoperation in service, or simple theft, the tapes and labels industry has recently come to realize a new...
Sticking the non-stick: Fluoropolymers and adhesion

Teflon, or polytetrafluoroethylene in more technical terms, is a prime candidate for the title "material of the modern age" but despite the well-known non-stick properties of this and related chemicals, it's still necessary to bond them on many...
Low Temperature Adhesives

Extremes of either high or low temperatures can bring about bond failure. Considerations must be taken into account before selecting the adhesive to be used if such conditions are likely to be encountered in service...
Epoxy adhesives

Epoxy adhesives are suitable for such a wide range of applications that they are sometimes mistakenly rejected on the grounds that they are too generalist. In fact there are so many grades available today that an epoxy's properties can usually be...
High Temperature Adhesives

For an adhesive bond to be useful, it must not only withstand the mechanical forces that act on it, but it must also resist the elements to which it is exposed during service. Extremes of either high or low temperatures can bring about bond failure....
Printable Adhesives

High volume manufacturing and adhesives can be uneasy bedfellows, but dispensing adhesives by printing is one realistic industrial option. Printable and patternable adhesives offer advantages over other fluid coating methods in terms of selective...
Accelerated Testing to Predict Service Life

It is desirable to know the rate at which an adhesive bond will lose strength due to environmental factors in service. Time and economics generally allow only short-term tests to verify the selection of the adhesive system relative to the...
Mobile Phone Adhesives

Perhaps even more than computers, mobile phones embody the progress of the electronic revolution into the 21st century. With annual handset sales expected to hit 1.13 billion this year1, manufacturers are dead set on continuing the trend, and making...
An Introduction to the Building and Construction Market

There are many applications in the building and construction industries for adhesives and sealants. These materials are highly valued because they can be formulated to set outdoors in a relatively short period of time, they have good adhesion to a...
Spin-on adhesives for use in electronics

The electronics industry can be an expensive field to manufacture within, especially the chip-level processing of the semiconductor materials that consumer products are based around...
Corrugated Board Manufacture

Almost 95% of all products that are shipped are shipped in corrugated boxes. These include small items such as light bulbs and pizza to larger items such as computers and dishwashers. In 2005, the value of the corrugated board market in the U.S....
Adhesives for Recycling of Paper

Many adhesives including pressure sensitive, hot melt, starch, and polyvinyl acetate emulsions are useful for bonding paper substrates. With the current emphasis on the production of "sustainable" or environmentally friendly products, it is very...
Hot Melt Sealants

The sealants industry has seen significant changes in recent years. Many of these changes are the result of demands from new substrates or for improved performance characteristics. However, some of the more rewarding changes have been due to demands...
Adhesion of Encapsulated Inserts

Some of the more important requirements for adhesion do not involve the use of discrete adhesives. For example, paint coatings must adhere well to substrates generally without an adhesive or primer layer, vinyl labels telling that its time for an...
Alternatives for Joining Plastics – Part III: Solvent Cementing

Each design engineer must determine the joining method that best suits the purpose. The choice will often depend on the type of plastic, the service environment, economic and time constraints, and production parameters...
Adhesive issues for LED Makers

The light emitting diode industry is expanding rapidly, as LEDs are used ever more widely in electronic goods, such as backlight units for mobile phones and flat-screen display equipment. LEDs also offer great potential in general illumination, where...
Cold Seal Adhesives

Cold seal adhesives are a special class of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs) that possess the capabilities of forming a strong bond to themselves at room temperature when only slight pressure is applied...
Alternatives for Joining Plastics – Part II: Thermal Welding

Each design engineer must determine the joining method that best suits the purpose. The choice will often depend on the type of plastic, the service environment, economic and time constraints, and production parameters...
Alternatives for Joining Plastics – Part I: Mechanical and Self-Fastening

An essential ingredient in many manufacturing operations is the knowledge of how to join parts made from plastics to themselves and to other substrates. The joining processes that can be used will be dependent on the type of polymeric resin and the...
Adhesive Bonding of Glass and Ceramic Substrates

Glass and ceramic substrates are generally high surface energy materials, and most adhesives wet them readily. A wide range of adhesive products can be used when bonding a glass or ceramic substrate to itself or to other substrates...
The Simple Approach to Nondestructive Testing and Failure Analysis

Nondestructive testing (NDT) and failure analysis of adhesive joints are nothing new. In fact, they have most likely been around since the time when adhesives were first used...
Choosing the Correct Mold Release - And Then Having to Remove It

Mold release agents act as an interface between the mold surface and the material being molded, allowing the part to separate cleanly and easily from the mold...
Reducing Automotive Noise with Pressure Sensitive Adhesives

Automotive manufacturers and tiered suppliers are constantly searching for faster and better ways to manufacture cars and subcomponents while reducing weight and decreasing costs...
What's New In Pressure Sensitive Adhesives?

Pressure sensitive adhesives (PSA) are gaining broad acceptance in industries and applications that previously relied upon either mechanical fastening or bonding with liquid adhesives to complete device assembly requirements...
Epoxy adhesive plays crucial role at CERN

Epoxy adhesives are set to play a vital role in Europe's biggest-ever scientific experiment at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, thereby helping scientists gain a better understanding of the origins of the...
When You Don't Want Adhesion

One sometimes desires a situation in which there is either (1) the absence of an adhesive bond or (2) a non-permanent bond and can be easily "debonded" at a predetermined time. The adhesive scientist generally uses two terms to describe such...
Low Temperature Pressure Sensitive Adhesives

Many pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) applications require resistance to cold temperatures. These include tapes, labels, and sealing adhesives that are used for frozen food packaging; certain electrical tapes; and adhesives that are exposed outdoors...
Radiation Resistance of Adhesives and Sealants

At one time the main interest in radiation resistant adhesives and sealants was in the nuclear power or the spacecraft industries. However, today there is still interest in radiation resistance, but it is coming from far different and more stable...
Sealant Joint Designs

In the first part of this two-part article, joint designs for adhesives were described. In this second part, joint designs for sealants will be examined. The various types of stress that are common to all sealant joints will be analyzed...
Joint Design for Adhesives

The design of the adhesive or sealant joint will play a significant factor in determining how the joint will survive load. Although it may be tempting to use joints originally intended for other methods of fastening, adhesives and sealants require...
What is Meant By "Wetting"?

If one looks at the adhesive bonding or sealing "process" as a single, complete procedure, then the basic requirements are the same no matter what the application. These universal prerequisites for successful bonding are...
Asking the Right Questions - the Art of Selecting the Proper Adhesive

This article will describe the processes involved in selecting an adhesive for a particular application. This is not as easy an endeavor as it might originally appear...
Quizzing Suppliers About Food Packaging Regulations

Choosing an adhesives supllier with strong regulatary expertise helps converters and end-users meet food contact regulations...
Adhesives for Wood Flooring

Wood flooring offers an excellent example of how the modern adhesives and sealants industry has overcome brutal challenges from both the market place as well as government regulators...
Applying and Curing Adhesives Underwater

"Adhesives and sealants should always be applied to dry, clean substrates." This is usually considered to be one of the unyielding commandments of adhesive bonding practice. However, in some cases it is not possible to dry the substrate, and in...
Chemical Resistance and Epoxy Adhesives

This article will look at the reasons why chemical environments affect adhesive bonds in general. The resistance of adhesives to mainly chemicals and solvents will be considered. Resistance of adhesives to moisture and weathering is an area that is...
Fire Testing of Adhesives and Sealants

Adhesives and sealants have an important role to play in improving the fire resistance of many products. However, most fire standards and test methods focus on testing the final product. At times it is difficult to understand and quantify the...
Laminating Adhesives for Flexible Packaging

The variety of modern flexible packaging products that are available today would not be possible without modern adhesive systems. The evolution of the packaging industry has closely matched the development of new adhesive materials and production...
Solvent Cementing of Plastics

The joining of plastics with adhesives is generally made more difficult because of the low surface energy, poor wettability, and presence of weak boundary layers that are often associated with these substrates...
What is bonding?

Adhesion is the adhering of similar or different types of materials to each other. Cohesion is the inner strength of a material, such as the adhesive in this case...
Structural Adhesives in Over-the-Road Applications

The automotive industry has a wide variety of applications for adhesives and sealants. Nonstructural applications dominate, and they include all interior trim and much of the exterior trim such as side molding, wheel covering emblems, front and rear...
Adhesive and Sealants in the New Alternative Energy Market

Seldom does a completely new market erupt where adhesives and sealants can play a critical part. However, the embryonic alternative energy market may provide just such an opportunity. Adhesives and sealants are necessary components in the wind...
Adhesive and Odor

Odor, or rather the absence thereof, is gaining an increasing importance as selection criterion for adhesives. Typical examples in which this topic plays an important role include the hygiene, the building and the automotive industries. All types of...
Cationic UV Cured Epoxy Adhesives

UV curing of cationic epoxy systems is not generally well understood. This is mainly because of (1) the relative newness of these cationic materials and (2) the popularity and volume of adhesives and coatings that cure via the free radical mechanism....
Adjusting the Charge-Density Parameter in Waterborne Adhesives

Dispersions of pigments containing different ions have been studied in waterborne latices in which the polymer contains ionizable functional groups. Vibrational spectroscopy has been used to analyze the polymer structural changes due to the presence...
The Bonding of Elastomers Part II - Bonding of Unvulcanized Elastomers

The bonding of elastomeric substrates is often a difficult proposition. Not only is the viscoelastic nature of the elastomer critically important in achieving a reliable bond, but there are also significant chemical factors that much be considered.
The Bonding of Elastomers Part I - Bonding to Post-Vulcanized Elastomers

This article explores the fundamentals of bonding post-vulcanized elastomers. Many of the factors contributing to strength and durability of elastomer bonds are considered. The different elastomers and their characteristics within an adhesive joint...
Abhesion or "Anti-Adhesion"

"Abhesives " are films or coatings that are used to prevent or greatly decrease adhesion. An abherend is a surface that discourages adhesion. Abhesive materials are also often referred to as mold-release agents, non-stick surface coatings,...
Use of ultrafine PCC in construction and glazing sealant

Ultrafine Precipitated Calcium Carbonate disperse easily into the sealant mix and helps in optimizing both pre-cure rheological properties as well as tensile properties of the cured sealant... This article outlines the benefits of using PCC in...
Cure Monitoring of Adhesives

Cure monitoring of adhesives is used to improve the efficiency of processing, for quality assurance, and to study the curing process. Cure monitoring techniques can generally be separated into two broad categories: indirect methods and direct...
New Epoxy Tougheners Widen the Adhesive-Formulating Window

Since their introduction in the late 1940s, epoxy resins have found widespread use in adhesives, sealants, flooring, paints and electrical applications. Modification of epoxy-resin systems by additives, modifiers, fillers, plasticizers and other...
Cellular (Foam) Adhesives