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Tecbond 265 - Great Adhesion on difficult to bond plastics and UV varnished surfaces

by Jon McCaugherty

Glueing plastics is challenging and certain plastics have always presented bonding problems.  Materials such as polypropylene, polyethylene and ABS (acrylonitrile-butadiene-sytrene) have low surface energy, meaning that they are relatively inert and non-polar.  This characteristic is the reason that they are selected for their particular application, but it makes sticking them a lot more demanding.  Selecting the correct adhesive is key and there are also some techniques which will also enhance the performance of your bond.  

Tecbond 265

Specifically developed for bonding Polypropylene and Polyethylene, Tecbond 265 has excellent adhesion to this material, as well as other smooth, shiny surfaces such as UV varnished boards.  Tecbond 265 is only available in 43mm slugs, since its relative softness means that it does not work well in 12mm hot glue stick forms through 12mm hot glue guns.  More specialist glue guns that accept 43mm are needed for using products like Tecbond 265, such as the Tec 3150, Tec 3400, Tec 6100  or the Tec 7100 industrial glue guns.  If you don't have the budget for a large glue gun, there are other products that are available which bond well to polypropylene, for example Tecbond 267 is available in a 12mm glue stick.  For other plastics Tecbond 248 an acrylic hot melt glue has great adhesion.

Give your glue the best chance possible

When bonding plastics, there are some important things to remember in order to get the best result possible.

Maximise the heat:  The hotter the glue the better is the rule when sticking plastics, so make sure that you use a hot glue gun with a good output and bring the surfaces to be glued together as soon as possible.  If you are sticking two different materials, apply your hot melt glue to the more difficult to bond surface.

Test before you go ahead:  It is worth checking a sample beforehand to make sure that the bond you achieve is what you are looking for.  Since hot melt adhesives are mixture of plastic materials they do go through a process of 'crystallisation' which takes around 24 hours to take place, so check your test samples after this time to make sure the bond is good enough for what you need.

We are always on hand to help, so please call us on 01525 381111, email us on info@directadhesives.co.uk or use the live chat option on our site.

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