Acrylic Cement

[awesomefrog]

Does anybody in the Rockford area do any DIY work with acrylic? I'm trying my hand at building a Nilsen Kalk Reactor out of acrylic and was wondering what is best to use for gluing parts together.

So if you work with acrylic, i'd love to hear what you use for cement--and where you get it.

I have read that Weld-On is supposed to be pretty good. I'm not sure if that's something that would be available at a local hardware store or not. But i'm glad to hear people's opinions and intel on local availability of products.

Thanks!

 

[BenjieC]

Midland Industrial Plastics in MP 815 282-4079 They had weldon 3 & 4 on display I wanted 4, but they only had 3 in stock. They may have had 16 in stock, but not sure. I had already p/u some from Abbott Plastics. 815-874-6297. They only had the 16. I plan on playing in the future, but won't have the time until my tank is up and running.

 

[awesomefrog]

Thanks Benjie, I'll check with both those places to see what they have in stock.

 

[ddresch]

I built a couple of shallow frag tanks a few years back, and used both weldon 3 and 16 on it. One is thin like water, and the other is thick like toothpaste. I used the thin for all the seams, and only used the thick stuff on the bottom seams. The tanks were between 8" and 12" deep, so I wasn't too concerned with the water pressure.

 

[awesomefrog]

How did you go about applying the #3? I read something about using a capillary technique where the liquid gets pulled between the two surfaces. Did you do that or just apply it to the edges and stick them together?

 

[ddresch]

I clamped the two edges together, and then applied it via the capillary technique, using a plastic bottle with a long metal tip. The glue easily runs between the two pieces of acrylic. I applied it to both sides, and it was easy to see where the glue reached and where I needed to add more. It's way too thin, and evaporates too quickly, to apply to both edges and then stick them together. If you don't care abotu the look, you could use that method with the #16 glue.

 

[awesomefrog]

Cool. Thanks for the help Dave. I might go with the #16 because i also want to attach a couple of PVC parts, and i remember reading that #16 could do acrylic to acrylic bonds as well as acrylic to PVC, but the liquid glues (like #3) will only do acrylic to acrylic.