Any advance on Araldite?

I need to buy some more 2 part epoxy adhesive for odd jobs such as china repair and metal to metal bonding and general repairs. I've used standard slow curing araldite in two tubes and been perfectly happy with it but the question is has there been any useful advances in the decades since CIBA produced Araldite.

Although I use the quick setting version for bodging etc I'm looking for the slow cure types that take several hours to "dry"

TIA

Bob

Reply to
Bob Minchin
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only a couple of hundred...

those should be stoved in the oven at around 80C for a couple of hours. Better bond that will resist heat.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

The slower the stronger.

Reply to
F Murtz

"Gorilla" is good stuff. Relies on moisture to make it go off. Gap filling and expanding. Possibly sticks even better than Aradite. And you get an awful lot for your money.

Reply to
harry

Polyurethane presumably. PU's expanding trick creates foam with almost no strength.

Araldite is an expensive brand of epoxy with no great features. Check out West systems & SP.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Not really true actually.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I've looked at SP and West but the quantities are far greater than I need. I'm looking at jobs where I'd use less than 1cc/ml of mixed adhesive. so the typical araldite pack of 2 x15ml (?) are plenty and I'm quite happy with the cost worked out on a price per repair job basis. Is there a better 2 tube product for general purpose use these days and what is it called.

TIA

Reply to
Bob Minchin

On 25 May 2016, F Murtz grunted:

Yeah I hadn't quite appreciated how true that is until I once had to buy a pack of Araldite Rapid rather than the standard stuff I've used for decades, which was out of stock - the Rapid was absolute pants.

I share the OP's interest in finding out whether there's a better alternative to the standard Araldite these days

Reply to
Lobster

Indeed, when I worked in an applied research lab, Araldite rapid or it's RS components own brand version, was specifically used for knocking up demonstrator equipment in the knowledge that we could easily break the bond when needed to either reposition and item or recover an expensive part fro re-use.

Rapid can also be used to tack parts in place and then reinforce the area with "full lead" epoxy afterwards.

Reply to
Bob Minchin

Millions. I buy from all sorts of places.

Models shops are good.

For metal to metal bonding I find car body filler more reliable. Epoxy must be mixed exactly and thoroughly, whereas polyester resins are catalytic.

In all case heating until runny helps mix and makes the epoxy much stronger and more heat resistant.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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Only about 300 to choose from.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

For metal to metal work, JB Weld can be good (its a metal loaded epoxy)

If you need it in quantity, then have a look at the west systems range. They let you choose fast and slow set by virtue of changing which hardener you use. They also supply the resin with a low viscosity, and you then add different fillers / colours as required to get something appropriate for your application.

Reply to
John Rumm

Have you ever tried JB Weld OOI Bob?

I would say it's more suited for metalwork type uses and can be filled, drilled and tapped when cured.

I recently used some to fill some holes in a hand vice where the PO had drilled into the vice in several places. Whilst in that case it was only used as a filler, I needed to be able to file it once cured to be flush with the remaining metal.

I'm also about to 'repair' a cast ally motor mount for an old British floor standing pillar drill I'm restoring. The motor (bought from eBay) wasn't very well packed and must have been dropped (or even put down heavily) somewhere along the line and it bent the foot slightly but the seller wouldn't take responsibility for the issue because I had disposed of the (inadequate, IMHO) packaging. If I had noticed the damage sooner (it was only cracked and bent a few degrees, not easy to tell till I placed it on a hard / flat surface) and kept the packing I'm not sure the courier would have coughed up in any case. ;-(

Anyway, I've stripped the paint and straightened the mount the best I can, linished the bottom flat and had a 3mm steel plate plasma cut to suit and I intend to bond the two together with JB Weld. The two parts will also be bolted together by the motor to mount and mount to drill bolts.

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I'll fill the smaller webs with JB Weld and turn and bond spacers in the voids for the motor bolt holes to resist the clamping force crushing the ally.

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Cheers, T i m

p.s. I've also used it to bond an ally collar into a ally thermostat housing to allow a std Mk2 Ford Escort thermostat housing to carry a electric fan switch. ;-)

Reply to
T i m

Doh. I might have posted my message before yours, had I not taken in a parcel and it distracted me. ;-(

'Great minds' though eh? ;-)

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

I used JB weld to put back together the two halves of a cracked stove glass window about a foot square on the front of our gas fire. TBH, I wasn't expecting much success, since it's an end-to-end repair, and then tightened down all around the edge, but to my amazement it's still holding after a few years.

Reply to
Dan S. MacAbre

Yup, it does seem to be good stuff but not cheap of course.

Cheers, T i m

Reply to
T i m

But unhelpful in terms of the question posed! Good brands? Ones you did not like etc or are they all much of a muchness?

Reply to
Bob Minchin

To be honest, once I realised that

(a) epoxy needs to be exactly measured (b) epoxy needs to be thoroughly mixed (c) heat makes it runny enough to mix well (d) heat makes it cure faster, harder and be more heat resistant.

I haven't really had an issue with any epoxy.

If you mix araldite at room temp, when its sets it goes rubbery under heat. If you heat it till it goes translucent it sets hard as glass and will crack before it peels.

I've got something called Devcon 2 ton epoxy here that I used to fix some china. Stoved at about 90C in the oven, its totally heat and water proof

The formulations are all slightly different - some are for metal, some for china, some for wood.

I've had most trouble with metal, no matter how well degreased.

'chemical metal' or car body filler (polyester, not epoxy) seems to bond far better.

However airliner aluminium skins are epoxied to the formers I believe

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message , snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

I know this is irrelevant to the original question but FWIW, when we built the boat nearly 30 years ago, I wrote to Ciba-Geigy (makers of Araldite) about buying epoxy in quantity. They replied saying they supplied SP Systems who would supply in quantity.

We used mainly slow resin/hardener mix with the various fillers all from SP Systems. Fillers included milled wood fibres (or sawdust when running low), glass bubbles and colloidal silica (to stiffen the mix). We also used some solvent-loaded epoxy for light coatings.

It all worked best when we first applied raw epoxy to wet what we were joining, then gradually loaded in the fillers to get the required mix appropriate to the particular joint, shape or coating needed.

Don't forget that epoxy is affected by light (presumably UV) and in quantity thermal runaway of the mix can be a problem.

Reply to
Bill

Useful and interesting points.

Reply to
Bob Minchin

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