"What to use for adhering card to plastic?" Topic

I'm trying to scratchbuild some VSF steam-tanks using bits made up of all sorts of different materials. So far the only thing that I find effective is JB Weld two part epoxy. Am I missing an easier alternative.I also have some wood bits to stick on there. Any insight is appreciated.

Try wallpaper border adhesive. It's like white glue on steroids and is made for gluing paper or plastic border to walls, including paper or plastic wallpaper. Available at your local home improvement or home decorating store

ACC is the only quick and easy adhesive for such dissimilar materials. Use it all the time for model railroading.

What is ACC?

"Adhere" is an intransitive verb.

Tacky Glue is sort of like a bastard step-child version of Elmer's Glue, but it works. It's my favorite easy glue to work with, and bonds paper and wood like crazy. The effect on plastic and metal is less effective (I'd usually look at superglues) (where Gorilla Glue is my current favorite), but still worth a try.

You can find it in craft stores, or the craft section of WalMart.

Examples of ACC glue would be Krazy Glue and Zap-a-Gap.

[found on the web, so it must be true]

ACC (alpha cyanoacrylate cement) is the original term for what is now known as CA (cyanoacrylate adhesive). Commercial brands are Krazy Glue, Zap-a-Gap and a whole bunch of others.

UHU All Purpose Adhesive.
link

Gorilla Glue. I have been using this glue to attach my miniature to there plastic or MDF bases. The glue is very strong.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough information in your original post to offer good suggestions.

What, specifically, do you mean by "card". Is it cardboard or plastic? Is it porous? If it's plastic card, what type of plastic is it?

And speaking of plastic, what sort of plastic is the card being glued to?

What is your application? I know you said you're scratch building but are you gluing figures to bases or using card as components of the models themselves?

I know this might sound complicated, but there are good reasons that there are so many different types of adhesives.

So, rather than toss an off-hand answer that might, or might not, actually work, a little more information would help get you where you need to be.

Funny,I knew what he meant.

Funny,I knew what he meant.

Are you sure?

I find UHU a bit brittle, depends on how you handle the models I guess. I'd use a contact glue for different materials, the kind where to apply to each surface, wait for it to dry, then stick them together.

I find UHU a bit brittle,

Really? I have never found it so. In my experience it dries to a quite elastic consistency. We are talking here about UHU All Purpose Adhesive – not any other kind of UHU.

While we're on the topic….
What's the strongest clear drying PVA-style glue out there? I made these little push-pin trees, or tree-push pins, to tack down my 3mm terrain mat. They look good but I'm kicking around for some sort of substance to soak them in that'll dry tough as nails, because I don't ever want to have to mess with them again after mass-producing 300+ of them! I made my first 80 or so with canopy foliage and regular clear-style school glue, and I can tell those will never be a problem. The rest I made with a hot glue gun and regular clump foliage, and although the regular PVA glue has made them feel pretty tough after I soaked them and let them dry, I can imagine with uncareful use they might start to shed some clumps here and there. I'd like to goop them down with something indestructible. Any suggestions?

The card is not the problem. It's the plastic. Xrays vision is correct. We need the type of plastic.

If it's Styrene- then regular old Revell cement will do the trick.

If it's polyethelene, then a two part epoxy will make a weak joint, and you might want to drill some holes through the polyethelene to let it ooze through. Actually ordinary rubber cement might work depending on the formulation of the polyethelene.

There IS a polyetheline adhesive, but it's hard to work with.

If the plastic is Poly Propelene- give it up mate, the adhesive hasn't been invented yet.

If you are gluing cardBOARD or some other paper product to plastic, I run with superglue. Gorilla Glue foams up too much for precision work. Yellow Carpenter's Wood Glue is another useful option, but it does NOT dry clear.

If you are gluing different types of plastic together, you need something with methylene chloride in it, like Plastruct Plasti-Weld.

methylene chloride will glue almost any plastic together, including different types of plastic.

What's the strongest clear drying PVA-style glue out there?

The one with the lowest water content.

Guess I was a little vague there, it happens to me when I work all day then try to squeeze a little hobby time in late at night. Me brain goes to mush! What I meant was cardboard to plastic. Specifically, I'm trying to glue strips of cardboard from a dog bone box onto an empty Mott's applesauce container. Thanks to everyone who took the time to look at and answer this post.

Cardboard to plastic, UHU works just fine, and is cheap. I don't like it for gluing metal bits as I find they pop off if knocked, but for plastics where solvent doesn't work or for card it does the job just fine.

DD,

Now I understand your dilemma. Cardboard is easy enough but the plastic is going to be difficult. Those little food cups (applesauce, pudding, etc.) are made of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) which is a very common plastic used in the food and beverage industry.

I did a little research and verified that PET is the plastic and looked into what one of the R/C modeler forums had to say. As a builder of plastic models, flying models and miniatures, I frequent a lot of forums and, for my money, if there is one group of people who know everything about gluing things together it's aero-modelers.

Anyhow, PET seems to be a particularly difficult material to work. One, because of the flexibility and, two, because of the plastic's resistance to chemical reaction (that, by-the-way, is a GOOD thing when it comes to containers for food).

The three leading candidates, are:

Hot glue
Gorilla glue
Epoxy specifically formulated for plastic.

I would think that low temperature hot glue would probably be preferred since PET deforms at low temperature and the containers you're using are pretty thin.

On the other hand, if you elect to try Gorilla glue, you will have to ensure that you control the foaming. I would recommend roughening the cup's surface with sandpaper to prepare it prior to gluing. Gorilla Glue reacts with water and foams while if cures. This can lead to unintended consequences.

I have used Loctite epoxy for plastic successfully when other adhesives wouldn't work. Notably, I had a heck of time trying to assemble the my Starship Troop bugs and figures. I don't know what kind of plastic that was used to mold them, but styrene cement wouldn't work and CA was way, way too brittle. and normal epoxy wouldn't stick tot he surfaces. This the only thing that worked. But, when fully cured, I could bounce those darn bugs off a tile floor!

Anyhow, the following is from the Loctite website:

Loctite® Epoxy Plastic Bonder is an acrylic formula that is specially formulated to bond and repair plastic surfaces. The convenient double syringe dispenses equal amounts of each component every time. When mixed in equal volumes, the components react to produce a tough, rigid, high strength bond in 20 to 25 minutes. Loctite® Epoxy Plastic Bonder does not shrink and is resistant to water, most common solvents and shop fluids. It has high impact resistance and can be sanded and drilled.

There's more information on the Loctite website about which plastics for which this is recommended and which it is not. PET doesn't appear in either so you will have to experiment. In any case, this is a good thing to keep in your hobby tool box and it's readily available at the DIY stores like Lowes and Home Depot.

loctiteproducts.com/p/epxy_plstc_s/overview/Loctite-Epoxy-Plastic-Bonder.htm

I hope this provides a little help and happy scratch building!

Actually, if I read right and PET is the same as PETE, same as recyclable soda pop bottles, id 1, the Motts are something else. I THINK they have a recycle id of 7, that is, 'other'.

I'll try to remember to look when I get home.

Mott's FAQ says that the Apple JUICE bottles are recyclable PET, but silent on the SAUCE cups.

Probably better than PP or PE, but damn if I know what.

I have several of the old cups without the logo on the side, and will be watching anyone who gets anything accomplished.

Doug

Thanks XRays, that is helpful!

Another thing to consider beyond what glue to use is that for the join points use a bit of rough sandpaper or similar to scratch up the surface of the plastic, that tends to let glue hold better

TheBeast,

It took me a while to find out that the cups are PET (aka PETE) and I had to go all over the net to find it. The Motts sight is silent. Honestly, I don't remember where I found it. Might have been USDA or something.

It would surprise me if it weren't sort of PET because, as food safe plastics go, it's ultra cheap, melts at a low temperature, and is easily vacuum or blow molded. Anyhow, I think that whatever they are made of, it is close enough in physical characteristics to PET that the gluing advice still holds (wow, that pun was totally accidental…)

DD,

Glad I could help. You are doing exactly the right thing. Years of experience in all kinds of model building has taught me to seek out advice, use that as a starting point, and then to experiment with the specific materials and adhesives. In this case we're not engineering a bridge; we're building a model. But there are still a lot a variables that you are going to have to consider. We don't know, for instance what kind of environment these toys are going to be exposed to (maybe you need something that will stand up to heat buildup in a locked car or go through airline baggage handling). We don't the size of the model, what's being modeled, or what the stresses that might be applied to during play (maybe it has to support the weight of multiple metal miniatures, for instance). We don't need to know everything, we know the basic materials so we can offer some basic advice to get you started.

So this is why my bits of plastic card fell off the Legos I glued them to a few weeks back.

I should have paid attention in chemistry class.

link

Gluing paper to plastic? Use 3M Super 77 spray glue.

Readily available at many home improvement stores, art supply shops. I have used it for many projects.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog