Does Silicone Bond to Acrylic
- Thread starter sleepydoc
- Start date
dkeller_nc
New member
From a chemistry perspective, you're right on the money. In theory, the siloxane group of a silicone polymer can form a bond with the hydroxyl group on the methacrylate polymer. In practice, it seems that this isn't a very strong bond, and is far weaker than the siloxane-silicon-dioxide bond formed with glass.
Epoxy is quite different, and appropriately cleaned acrylic surfaces will bond incredibly securely with an appropriately cleaned glass surface using this compound. I glue my overflows with epoxy for this reason - not sure why very few others do.
uncleof6
Active member
You won't find a pro builder that does that. They use a UV catalyzed polymer of unknown (unpublished) type for structural bonding glass acrylic/pvc. It is all very proprietary. If you can do it at home, you are not using the right stuff.
Silicone is fine with acrylic for inside the tank applications. I would imagine epoxy would be also. If you are building outside the tank, use glass and silicone. There is no point whatsoever in doing otherwise. None.
thejuggernaut
Member
Holy crap this stuff is expensive! Is this sort of what you're talking about?
http://www.thorlabs.com/thorproduct.cfm?partnumber=NOA68
http://www.thorlabs.com/thorproduct.cfm?partnumber=NOA68
uncleof6
Active member
You got me, I don't know for sure. As much as I do know about this crud, I do not know what particular polymer they are using to build hybrid tanks, but you can bet it is not cheap, as you see.
dkeller_nc
New member
Generally I use a 3M 25 minute cure low viscosity 2-part epoxy. The specific product is Scotch-Weld DP125.
What I've found is that breaking the bond requires breaking the glass, the acrylic, or both (in other words, the glue and bond is stronger than the materials). One heck of a lot stronger than silicone bonding of glass, but not nearly as flexible (it definitely wouldn't be appropriate for a vibration-resistant application).
