Hot Glue Questions

depends on ambient temperature

a few minutes is all

-- “it should be clear by now to everyone that activist environmentalism (or environmental activism) is becoming a general ideology about humans, about their freedom, about the relationship between the individual and the state, and about the manipulation of people under the guise of a 'noble' idea. It is not an honest pursuit of 'sustainable development,' a matter of elementary environmental protection, or a search for rational mechanisms designed to achieve a healthy environment. Yet things do occur that make you shake your head and remind yourself that you live neither in Joseph Stalin’s Communist era, nor in the Orwellian utopia of 1984.”

Vaclav Klaus

No.

never tried. I would think depends on temp, but outside sets first. Google says new glue melts surface of old so just make sure its set solid. Trial and error?

Dave

Depends on the type of glue stick, and also the thickness of the glue. "normal" ones have a little bit of flexibility, so for example if you glued a couple of sheets of card to each other, you could bend the glue line without it snapping.

What is it that you want to do?

Setting time will depend on a number of factors - but mainly the ability of the things you are gluing to absorb heat and lower the temperature. Put on a thick heavy bead and it will take longer to cool and hence "set".

Some tips for new users:

Wear gloves - if you get any on the skin, it hurts, and you can't wipe it off! (trying makes it worse - DAMHIK) - have some water on hand.

If you need to unstick something stuck with hotmelt, then give it a quick spray of IPA solvent - that breaks the bond between the glue and the thing it is stuck to.

One something is stuck in place, you can build up additional glue to encapsulate or strengthen the bond and add support. (this might pertain to your question more - you can just build up in one go, but you end up with glue that might want to flow of sag - lettings it cool between applications can help. (many glues go transparent when in their liquid state and then cloud over as they set)

If you want a temporary fix between things (say for work holding), apply masking tape to both surfaces, then glue them together on the tape. You can then prize them apart more easily later. (that trick works will with CA glue and accelerator as well)

I never needed one, than after I bought one for a particular job, I've used it pretty much every week for something.

The type I have used doesn't go really hard e.g. like epoxy. I've used it to make strain reliefs on wires, tapering it down further away from the end. You want a strain relief to be somewhat flexible, the idea being that there's no hard edge for the cable to flex across.

Not very long, less than a minute usually. There's nothing critical about it, you can melt and remelt the glue as often as needed to get the shape you need. I've sometimes used a hot air tool (for soldering, not paint stripping) to shape the final result. A sort of quick and dirty 3D printer.

Thank you, all.

My immediate aim is to repair a cylinder-style VAX carpet washer and a Scott rotary lawn fertiliser spreader. Both are made from well-aged plastic (ABS?). Both have crazed quite extensively.

I've assumed that gluing the parts directly to each other would just result in further crumbling a molecule either side of the glue, so I was planning to build a broad welt along the surface(s) of the (many) breaks. A sort of jig-saw puzzle.

Incidentally, I have purchased a Hyundai cylinder vacuum/washer, so I've got a Plan B. It's manual is weird, though. It is written in good English but just seems to be written by someone who has never seen the product. So the "what's in the box" ignores some of the items actually in the box - as do the setting up and how-to-use sections of the manual.

Weird.

Latching on to this useful thread.

Can you loosen the hot glue with, for example, a hot air gun? I am thinking of sticking a long run of plastic flooring to a wall (tanking in a wet room) which has come unstuck. I anticipate getting some of it stuck and perhaps a few blobs of glue not quite stuck. It would be good to be able to reflow the joint where it hasn't taken.

Cheers

Dave R

Yes, I've used a soldering hot air station to do that.

I think the melting temp is fairly low, so a regular mains hot air gun would probably work. A hairdryer probably wouldn't.

In that case I might be concerned about the hot air damaging the plastic flooring. eg if it's some kind of laminate, it might not take a lot of heat to damage the top layers. Maybe if you can carefully direct the hot air behind? But don't forget that brick / plaster / etc is a decent heatsink.

Theo

Some more:

Hot melt glue will not stick to cold metal well. It'll peel off more or less easily.

It will stick to dirt on metal, so: apply glue on the face of pliers, or a file, peel it off, and it will remove the (top layer) of dirt in the fine grooves, and finish the job a wire brush starts. It'll also pick up iron filings that get on magnetized tools.

A lighter and a glue stick make a good "emergency repair glue gun".

Compressed air and a glue gun can be used to make fake spider webs, instructions on youtube. (okay, maybe not your everyday use case)

Thomas Prufer

Received the glue gun this afternoon - but not the 30 glue sticks.

O Iesu Mawr.

AND the "20W" Gun is a 5W ( @241V ) one. Crooked old eBay!

Some more tips. For coloured hot-melt, melt clear stick onto some silicone/ptfe sheet and mix in flakes of kids crayons to required colour match, cool, roll up and reintroduce into the gun. Surprising amount of thermal hysterisis? , for taking molding from heat susceptible material. Melt a blob, and when cooled to ust above room temperature , the core still has a lot of plasticity and the blob can be pushed into the receiving material, can be very complex 3D shape.

Some Hyundai equipment is sourced not just from a Chinese factory but is also a generic item produced there and sold under different brand names , the manual may have started life with the original before Hyundai had it produced in their name.

GH

Oh, sure, but, whatever, is is quite unexpected to get manuals in very good English, rather then in Chinglish.

One unaccounted for items is a 12v alkaline battery. No battery referred to - nothing that would need a battery described!

Being a very shiny silver drum with a large smiley on its top, I'm probably going to name it Count Binface.

"ChatGPT, please write me a manual for a vacuum cleaner"

Out come 10,000 words of grammatically perfect bollocks.

That looks likely to be rebranded Chinesium. Although typically the Chinesium they select is generally alright.

(I have an air compressor sold by SGS that's identical to the Hyundai but for the paint job, also sold by various no-brands. SGS happened to be cheaper at the time)

Theo