Love the mini Thomas as a narrator. Great idea and thanks for taking this much effort in post processing. Your videos, same as CNC kitchen, are always very thoroughly explained and because of that, stay relevant years after filming, even if some technologies march on.
@@slicedpage the statistical residuals would be huge (difference between measurements and estimated value) as in 9/10 of a Sanlander. Royalty residuals would be 🥜, but they seem to live in the same household anyway, so it wouldn't change much in the household income. And yes, I answer rhetorical questions.
To expand on methods to stick parts together, two topics I'd like to hear about are: creating interlocking features that jam together robustly. And techniques for welding parts together with heat, either by heating one or both surfaces, or by applying hot filler material from say a 3d filament "pen", like MIG welding steel. Oh I guess there's also friction welding.
once you include welding type bonds it becomes hard to argue against acetone welding on ABS there are also modelmaking glues that also work that way. dissolve the surface so that the two plastic parts literally become one and then harden again by evaporating the solvent. usability depends on the type of plastic though....
I actually repair broken prints with a 3d pen and it's very tricky to do. You need to touch/heat both surfaces before you extrude the filter material. Or else it won't transfer enough heat to actually melt everything together. But if you manage to get it done, you end up with sanding a perfekt bond.
@@spagamoto It seems even water causes a reaction but sodium bicarbonate causes an exothermic reaction that boils off the natural water to cure instantly with a puff of heat and CO². The increased surface area of any granules helps the traditional water reaction go faster too.
Someone did a detailed video on this and found that the rubber infused Loctite Ultra Gel Control Super Glue was by far the best for PLA. I bought some, but it hardened in the container in the many months long delay before I even opened and tried to use it! I've had good luck on PLA parts with minimal gaps using water-thin CA which wicks into the joint.
@@johnpeters4214 I also get the small 2g tubes in both gel and “regular”. I love never having to deal with a bottle going hard or all of that buildup at the tip that happens over time
@@UNVIRUSLETALE Yes. Store in fridge but let it reach room temperature before using it, otherwise air moisture might dew inside the tube, which means it'll polymerize faster instead of slower
I've gone through a lot of adhesives and solvents trying to find what works for me with various materials and uses. For me, CA (esp. Loctite Ultra gel) works a treat with PLA and adequately with most PETGs. Epoxy (yay JB weld) is very solid if not too thinly applied with just about everything. If I really need strength, it's solvents e.g. Weld-on 3 or 4 (I like 4 for PETG). When working with TPU, which admittedly I haven't done a lot, I've found Loctite 406 (with or without primer) to be almost as good as a solvent (being a CA, also works with PLA and PETG). For a solvent, I used DMF once and it welded TPU great (I hear THF also works but I haven't tested it). I mostly stick (ha!) with 406 since it's more versatile for me.
I have been using Weld-on 3 for PLA and it's fantastic. I also have some 3DGloop but unused. I have a funny feeling the secret ingredient is Methylene Chloride. (well ventilated!)
For PLA (and to some extend also PETG), "UHU Hartkunststoff" works very well. It dissolves part of the material and kinda welds them together at the joint. From its usage it works just like normal glue, so its easy to use as well.
@@PTEC3D Weldon acrylic glue works well. Especially the thicker stuff if you need some gap fill. MEK and DCM are the solvents, so it does the same type of bonding. (But do it in a well ventilated area.)
Hi Tom. I work with gluing up 3D prints almost daily. I'd like to mention that CA glues, I have found have very useful variants. There are Thin, Medium, and Thick variations, as well as some which are rubber toughened. I typically use accelerators with them, but not always. Accelerators can cause glues to boil and bubble in some situations causing aerated volume increase. I'm eager to see how it works with PETG. My favorite CA so far is Starbond. They have a great variety, and I keep all four I mentioned at the ready.
Really intresting results. I work in automotive and we use vhb everywhere. I engineered some bodyside rub strips for a car manufacturer I think (would need to check) they used a pc/abs substrate injection mouldings with vhb to attach to a painted door. I tested them in an environmental chamber for over a week with no issues I could have picked a car up with them. I guess because of the large surface area. Took a good 40 minutes to get them off again the stuff is a nightmare to remove used a rubber wheel on a drill.
I really like E6000/GOOP in general, and it works really well with PETG. They're similar to the FixAll you used. They stay rubbery. And because they are more cohesive than adhesive, they're easy to remove with a little stretching.
Awesome video! It's so cool to dive into something so deep that doesn't seem all that difficult. Personally I use PVC glue. It's mostly used for bonding pvc rain pipes and in my experience it works well on 3D prints. Also it is really cheap and you're getting a good amount for the price. Keep up the good work Tom!
Great series of tests Thom. A small note -- JBWeld is an epoxy, but a heavily steel-reinforced one. It is perhaps not the best representative for "generic" two-part epoxies. In the UK there's Araldite, globally 3M Scotch-Weld, Loctite (but those are usually more industrial use) and I'm sure there's a fairly generic one in Germany too.
what's a good alternative for "less reinforced" epoxy? when i used JB weld, i figured it'd be fine to let it harden and sand way the blobs on the outside. i ended up having to take a full palm sander to it to even get it down a bit.
Thanks for both getting the data, and going beyond the data to what applications the "bad" tested adhesives are actually good for. Interesting to see the material-related results.
Since I am a bit professional in the field of plastics, I would have to comment that any kind of bonding is depending a lot on preparation of surface i.e. it has to be dust clean, de-greased and without any other contaminants. Apart from that superglue (cyanoacrylat) is reacting with airmoisture, that starts curing process. I could see that some of the guys in the comments are using quite industrial grades of bonding material that I know from my time in wind turbine blade manufacturing and that is great. Just please remember to be safe, also when we are talking about use of epoxy (that personally adore as manufacturing material) and PUR. So keep creating but be safe as well!
For PLA, acrylic glue (solvent based cement for glueing plexiglas/PMMA) works well - it seems the solvent used for PMMA/acrylic also dissolves PLA, and creates a strong weld bond. This is a one-component glue that's sold in the hardware store as a squeeze tube, so it's a bit less hassle than 2-component glues.
I wish you would have tested E6000 because I use it for a lot of things. Since it is basically the same thing as plastic model glue (at least it feels and smells the same), it works well for plastics. My guess is that is would be a good compromise between the two types you've shown. Probably stronger than the silicone/VHB/hotglue, but it is certainly not as strong as superglue or 2-part glues.
I use ABS slurry (ABS dissolved in Acetone) as an adhesive for PLA. I think it works really well and would be interested in how it holds up to comparative testing in future videos.
Absolutely love the way you have a question, find different possible solutions, test them, compile data, summarize results. I think this is exemplary of some of your best work on this channel. I would love to see you devise testing jigs for tensile and shear loadings that you talked about. Keep up the good work!
With the advent of PLA+, almost no one uses PETG anymore. I print almost exclusively in petg because almost all my prints are functional so I'm SO happy you covered it.
I have used Testors model glue on PLA. It seems to do a decent enough job. Also contact cement as long as you have a nice flat surface to join together.
I miss two glues i used with PLA in the past: PVC-glue (the stuff that is used to glue PVC water pipes etc.) and Bison Kit Adhesive. Both work very well.
Yeah, the mini-Thomas was pretty awesome. I'm glad you were able to apply a patch to this, keeping the same content. I've watched this a few times now. I'd love to see another series of videos that maybe focus on a specific type of adhesive. So one video for different types of super glue (my favorite, I love CA), and a different video for JB Weld or whatever. I'm not a fan of epoxy, so it's nice to have my CA bias ("super glue is very good") proven with a visually fun and scientific method. I don't often have curvy/gaps in my parts, so it's nice to see that CA generally ends up being stronger than the parts themselves.
There's two more tests your really need to do to see the differences between the different glues: pulling directly against the glue surface, and dropping things from a moderate height. I say this because CA glue is SO strong for forces that are pulling on the joint - but it's also brittle and tends to shatter when subjected to shearing forces. So CA glue is fine for most things, until you drop it. Also: I love that you ran up against the challenges of ADR and just nerped out of it. :D
I like and now only use Weldon 16 for PLA, hands down the best but probably not the best stuff for you. CA and epoxy are good too if surface prep is good.
honestly dont know why you would use anything other than weld on #16 on PLA. Easy application, no mixing, cures in a couple of minutes and makes a stronger bond than CA glue without having to use an activator or filling agent
Thanks for doing all this work for us. I've been liking JB Weld's light activated cyanoacrylate adhesive. The light source with the LED on the dispenser makes it easy to control the run out. I've also finally started using the 3D Gloop! I bought a while ago and never really used. So long as you clamp the part it work amazingly well (the PLA breaks first). VHB is a pressure-sensitive adhesive, so really needs to be clamped to get the best results. It still won't work well under shear though.
I just used some JBweld 2 part epoxy for plastic on some models I needed to glue the arms and legs onto. I knew I didn't want to use super glue because it can't gap fill and it just runs all over my fingers. Awesome video!
Thank you Thomas. I myself have sometimes struggled with this issue over the years. I have settled with mechanical joints when I need parts to be strongly held together, be it fasteners (screws) or other 3D printed parts and hot glue when the parts will not endure high stress.
Great video, any chance you could do TPU ? I found a few videos about it but it's mostly US testers and we can't really find the same glues in europe. Thanks :)
What I find useful to increase the strength of bonds of two part epoxy (when transparent), is to go beyond the joint and around the area surrounding the joint. It helps a lot reinforcing the print.
It is odd that the ‘None’ control performed better than the adhesives, considering that some of the tests broke at the plastic rather than the bond line. I wonder it VampCaff’s comment about the bonding agent affecting the plastic is a cause or if there are other factors involved? Since I print functional parts, bond or plastic degradation over time would be an important consideration in the choice of adhesives. Thanks for the work, Tom, appreciate it.
My go-to "glue" for 3D prints is "Plastruct Bondene" plastic cement. You have to use the "Bondene" variety of Plastruct cement...the regular Plastruct cement is not as versatile. It solvent welds the stuff together. You will sooner tear the printed piece apart at the layer lines than at the glue joint. It works for PLA, ABS, PETG and certainly more. Keep in mind that the stuff dries extremely quickly, so, make sure you put the cap back onto the bottle right away. Super glue (cyanoacrylate) works decently on 3D prints, hot glue guns work great for certain applications and even various thermal welding techniques can work just fine. But the cleanest and strongest joint will be achieved with a solvent welding cement (especially if combined with a joint design that allows the parts to physically interlock).
A couple of weeks ago I glued a screw made from PLA that I use for a desk mount for a gamecontroller and which broke in the thread close to the shank. I glued it with Loctite and I used the screw several times already and I always put a lot of torque on it, but it didn't break again. So it looks to me that Loctite is a very good adhesive for PLA as well.
To add to your point about VHB tape at 13:27, I've had VHB tape holding up a 3D printed phone mount on my car's dash for the past 3 years without any issues. The dash is close to vertical so the force acting on the tape is more of a sheer force than the ones in your test. I think that with the tape also sticking very well to the car means that VHB tape is a great option for this use and maybe better than glues. Plus VHB tape is removable-ish so for something in a car that you dont wanna use glue on its a great choice
You can also use heptane or other liquid alkanes. The 3M primer is just heptane with triphenylphosphine added as a curing agent for superglue. So if you're using something other than superglue, plain heptane should work just as well.
One thing I've been curious about is using JB weld as a print bed surface. I use it to fill in holes in my PEI/steel sheets when parts adhere a little too well and it rips chunks of the PEI off, particularly with ABS where I need maximum adhesion particularly with larger prints.
As someone who does this kind of materials testing as part of my job, this was really well done and dang that was a lot of work! The only thing I'm going to ding you on is error bars! :) Standard deviation is fine, but I prefer either 90 or 95% confidence intervals! :)
There are LSE primers available for low surface energy materials like PP, PE, even teflon apparently. It's supposed to increase bonding on these materials. I used it to glue magnets into PETG using "rubber reinforced" superglue. It was called "3770 primer". Found it on eBay. Don't know how much impact it makes, and I don't know if printed plastic is considered LSE.
3DGloop looks really good for joining parts with. It is, of course, a specific product for a specific plastic. Haven't tried it myself yet but it looks very interesting. But they do have PLA, PET and ABS gloop.
Pro tip.... that "gap filler" for the superglue. It's just baking soda. It will dry any CA glue "superglue" on contact and give it structure. They actually use this technique to fill large holes in helicopter blades. It can fill seriously large holes this way. Just add CA glue and sprinkle the baking soda on then rub/ blow it off. It seriously comes in handy.
Hi, nice test, I came from a plastic industries out of the old day's , made Signs from Acrylic, vacuum forming and a lot of other things. So got some old stuff at my place Röhm 117 glue for Acrylic and Methylene Chloride, those work incredible good with PLA and PET, you can also use acetone and the gel form of superglue. Like to see more of your tests! Kind regards, Tom
Model glue. Direct extruder mount I printed in 2 pieces because I just couldn't get the line up right. Glued, clamped and left over night and the stepper mount was solid. This was Overture PLA+
VHB Tape is a hell of an adhesive for 3D printed parts - you just have to read the specs and get the right one! I'm printing (in PETG) mounts for a little electronic dashboard device for motorcycles and those attach with VHB tape so well that a) it's nearly impossible to remove (unless you use the right technique, which involves dental floss), and b) the tape comes off the aluminium on the motorcycle side first. The trick to finding the right VHB tape is knowing the surface energy of your material, wether it's high or low. 3M has pretty good documentation on that. Oh, and then you of course need to get the right thickness, so that the contact surface is as large as possible. For your curved test, you should have used tape that touches all edges, or even more, then you should have seen a much better result and no peeling back.
I bought some ‘acrylic plastics cement’ seems to bond really well to PLA even though it’s meant for PETG It supposedly fuses the plastics together by surface softening
this is a great presentation. as a followup though: mixing super glue with baking soda has very interesting properties. it crystalizes to an extremely hard surface : on many occasions I initially glue with super glue to just hold the parts, the with a wet finger dip it into baking soda and fill the gaps with the dampened baking soda and then use the crazy glue on that. it becomes a material much harder and stiffer than the pla plastic.
I can confirm Krazy Glue works well on Overture silk PLA. I printed an air raid siren rotor and glued the parts together, and it survived 12,000RPM perfectly fine. I've tried to pull the parts apart, and couldn't.
Can you believe it man? The G+ community years ago capped out around 500k or so members, and I am pretty sure at least half of them were bots. You...singularly...have surpassed that by a significant margin. Can't wait to see 500k :)
I prefer to use my handheld printer pen and repair with the same filament I printed with. I’m sure in a pinch you could extrude with your hotend right onto the break and quickly squeeze the parts together. Or even use your desolder gun and melt filament into the part. Can you test that also?
I liked your spin on fixing a messed up recording. That worked well. Invest in a a green screen and that'll make your production look so much smoother (no white outline on your inset overlay)
IDK about you, but my glue gun and other industrial glue guns function at 200c. Techbond makes tons of different stick blends. Half of them are true high temp that don't even begin to soften at ambient temperatures. Their highest temp stick for cardboard is very stiff, almost like a filament plastic.
Very using and pragmatic information. Thanks for going through all the effort to do these comparisons. Hope progress with new studio going well and you are settling in. Moving always more effort that anticipated.
I found that 3M double stick Gray tape that it say can hold something like 30 lbs does not stick well at all. But the Clear 15 lbs 3M tape works well. I have only use the clear version on my Dayton Exciter speaker to stick to my cardboard cone but this works great. This version is the tape that comes on the Dayton Exciter speakers when you buy them.
We use Loctite 3D Universal Bonder at work and love it! Mostly PLA and ABS prints. I wish it came with more mixing tips though since it’s a 2 part adhesive.
From my experience, going over the broken part with soldering iron, has a high chance to top the strength chart. Set temperature somewhere in the range of 110-210 C (depending on the stage, experiment), start with higher temp and use pointy tip and stab parts together couple times, then lower temperature and use knife tip to smooth the edges. I'm surprised I did not see any comments suggesting it.
Proper heat for layer adhesion is a big factor here too. If the room you are printing is too cold, the fans are too high or your nozzle temp is just not hot enough, then your prints will be weaker. Also of course the design of the print itself matters a lot too. Honestly 3d printing even with just PLA at 100% infill is very strong. When above 1/4 inch thicknesses. As will basically all things plastic, you need to go thicker and bigger to have really good strength. However not everything needs to be strong and that's where 3d printing really shines. You can make incredibly complex prints with very little infill, using clever infill techniques, to make insanely light things. But that isn't to say that they are so weak, that if you look at them wrong they will break but even if they do, it's relatively easy to glue or just so cheap you can print another one 😅
CA glue (particularly if you look at woodworking supplies) can be used in different consistencies and have an accelerator spray that may be of use for immediate set up. You can check that out too
Excellent video - I'm glad to see my use of a meme adhesive is not in vain! 😂 I had to use JB Weld to fasten some PETG parts together and it does great. I did notice tackiness/softness as well initially, though I thought that might be due to the fact the tubes were several years old since I opened them and figured the activator might have aged. Eventually, it hardened more.
I do mainly structural prints in PLA+ and have been using super glue gel from Harbor Freight. I have tried most of the major brands available here in the US but the HF bonds better (failure of print material before the adhesive) and is cheap. (3.99 US for 10 tubes). Their gel is perfect for what I do as it is thinner than most gels but thick enough to fill gaps and inconsistencies when needed. The "mini me" save on the video did a good job of saving the video without being too corny.
Did some prop work at my old job, we used hotglue all the time, you can get some specialty types that, believe it or not, are heat resistant. Used some for a qi charger in my car, it handled being in the car during the summer at 30°C (outside)
Before I had a enclosed printer i used PETG too. But PETG is hard to clue and it can damage the build surface easily. I now have a Voron 2.4 and print in ABS only. ABS is strong and can resist high temperatures too. My go to material for now.
Yes I did learned something from this video Thomas, I have been using super glue for glueing models together, I did use resin in the past as well, and that did also worked pretty great
God VHB tape still haunts my nightmares. I worked at a testing lab, doing mechanical testing. One of the tests I ran a lot was peel testing, and that VHB was a nightmare to get off the substrate after the test. Usually involved at least N-Hexane,steel wool, and a razor blade. Half the time I just through the stainless test panels in the scrap bin whenever I got VHB.
Great video! For PLA I'm more or less only using Scotch Gel glue, yes the green tube you find in every supermarket. It contains acetone so it's like fusing PLA using acetone but much cleaner and easier to control. Note that there is a stronger version of it with a red cap that doesn't work because it doesn't contain acétone.
What about the superglue gel, l use Pattex Gold Gel. Give also some time to correct the parts before its stucks on the spot. It's harden out on moister and fills the caps very good.
When working with CA glue you really need accelerator spray. It's like magic, especially when you want to fill gaps. It makes the glue harden so fast that it can't run away. When you start with a more gel-like CA glue, you can even do things like make connectors just by soldering wires to pin headers, pouring superglue on the solder connection and spraying the accelerator. It encases the solder joint in a transparent mass and the best thing is you can still see the wire colors. When glueing things together you can put the glue on one part and spray the other part and then press the 2 parts together.
Love the mini Thomas as a narrator. Great idea and thanks for taking this much effort in post processing.
Your videos, same as CNC kitchen, are always very thoroughly explained and because of that, stay relevant years after filming, even if some technologies march on.
Many thanks!
The trouble is Thom Thumb will want residuals!
@@slicedpage the statistical residuals would be huge (difference between measurements and estimated value) as in 9/10 of a Sanlander.
Royalty residuals would be 🥜, but they seem to live in the same household anyway, so it wouldn't change much in the household income.
And yes, I answer rhetorical questions.
@@pteppig "And yes, I answer rhetorical questions" Who can do it better!
To expand on methods to stick parts together, two topics I'd like to hear about are: creating interlocking features that jam together robustly. And techniques for welding parts together with heat, either by heating one or both surfaces, or by applying hot filler material from say a 3d filament "pen", like MIG welding steel. Oh I guess there's also friction welding.
Don't forget the wide world of fasteners, as well as compliant snap-locks!
once you include welding type bonds it becomes hard to argue against acetone welding on ABS
there are also modelmaking glues that also work that way. dissolve the surface so that the two plastic parts literally become one and then harden again by evaporating the solvent.
usability depends on the type of plastic though....
See my other comment re: friction welding. It's easy to get the hang of.
Yes please!
I actually repair broken prints with a 3d pen and it's very tricky to do. You need to touch/heat both surfaces before you extrude the filter material. Or else it won't transfer enough heat to actually melt everything together. But if you manage to get it done, you end up with sanding a perfekt bond.
Sawdust or baking soda work as great binders and fillers for superglue/cyanoacrylate. Dries instantly and fills out the area.
I've used baking soda and super glue when filling guitar nut slots that I cut too deep and it hardens like glass!
I once did an emergency repair in the office, and Splenda worked very well, too. Almost anything that's a fine powder will work.
@@spagamoto Did it also seem to instantly cure like it does with baking soda?
@@emmettturner9452 Yes it did. Would be interesting to compare the ultimate strength vs other fillers...
@@spagamoto It seems even water causes a reaction but sodium bicarbonate causes an exothermic reaction that boils off the natural water to cure instantly with a puff of heat and CO². The increased surface area of any granules helps the traditional water reaction go faster too.
Someone did a detailed video on this and found that the rubber infused Loctite Ultra Gel Control Super Glue was by far the best for PLA. I bought some, but it hardened in the container in the many months long delay before I even opened and tried to use it! I've had good luck on PLA parts with minimal gaps using water-thin CA which wicks into the joint.
Try storing it in the fridge next, it helps a lot with shelf life for cyanoacrylates
@@UNVIRUSLETALE woah woah woah, for real?
I use small tubes of Loctite Gel Universal. They last for at least a month after I open them.
@@johnpeters4214 I also get the small 2g tubes in both gel and “regular”. I love never having to deal with a bottle going hard or all of that buildup at the tip that happens over time
@@UNVIRUSLETALE Yes. Store in fridge but let it reach room temperature before using it, otherwise air moisture might dew inside the tube, which means it'll polymerize faster instead of slower
i do love the fact that your filament guide on your Voron is still a V6 heatbreak with a C Clamp
I've gone through a lot of adhesives and solvents trying to find what works for me with various materials and uses. For me, CA (esp. Loctite Ultra gel) works a treat with PLA and adequately with most PETGs. Epoxy (yay JB weld) is very solid if not too thinly applied with just about everything. If I really need strength, it's solvents e.g. Weld-on 3 or 4 (I like 4 for PETG). When working with TPU, which admittedly I haven't done a lot, I've found Loctite 406 (with or without primer) to be almost as good as a solvent (being a CA, also works with PLA and PETG). For a solvent, I used DMF once and it welded TPU great (I hear THF also works but I haven't tested it). I mostly stick (ha!) with 406 since it's more versatile for me.
I have been using Weld-on 3 for PLA and it's fantastic. I also have some 3DGloop but unused. I have a funny feeling the secret ingredient is Methylene Chloride. (well ventilated!)
@@johnbickford9221
For PLA (and to some extend also PETG), "UHU Hartkunststoff" works very well. It dissolves part of the material and kinda welds them together at the joint. From its usage it works just like normal glue, so its easy to use as well.
I think I can find UHU products here in Australia, I remember them from my childhood in Wien.
@@PTEC3D Weldon acrylic glue works well. Especially the thicker stuff if you need some gap fill.
MEK and DCM are the solvents, so it does the same type of bonding. (But do it in a well ventilated area.)
Would be curious to know how something like E6000 would work with the various materials. Thanks for sharing!
1:50 using a 3D printer as a spool holder. What a mad lad
Hi Tom. I work with gluing up 3D prints almost daily. I'd like to mention that CA glues, I have found have very useful variants. There are Thin, Medium, and Thick variations, as well as some which are rubber toughened. I typically use accelerators with them, but not always. Accelerators can cause glues to boil and bubble in some situations causing aerated volume increase. I'm eager to see how it works with PETG. My favorite CA so far is Starbond. They have a great variety, and I keep all four I mentioned at the ready.
I like the gel type super glue, it's easier to work with. Have you tried super glue and baking soda?
Really intresting results. I work in automotive and we use vhb everywhere. I engineered some bodyside rub strips for a car manufacturer I think (would need to check) they used a pc/abs substrate injection mouldings with vhb to attach to a painted door. I tested them in an environmental chamber for over a week with no issues I could have picked a car up with them. I guess because of the large surface area. Took a good 40 minutes to get them off again the stuff is a nightmare to remove used a rubber wheel on a drill.
Mini Thomas narration is something you should 100% do more of.
I really like E6000/GOOP in general, and it works really well with PETG. They're similar to the FixAll you used. They stay rubbery. And because they are more cohesive than adhesive, they're easy to remove with a little stretching.
E6000 is my favorite too, but in some applications I need something stronger.
Awesome video! It's so cool to dive into something so deep that doesn't seem all that difficult. Personally I use PVC glue. It's mostly used for bonding pvc rain pipes and in my experience it works well on 3D prints. Also it is really cheap and you're getting a good amount for the price. Keep up the good work Tom!
Great series of tests Thom. A small note -- JBWeld is an epoxy, but a heavily steel-reinforced one. It is perhaps not the best representative for "generic" two-part epoxies. In the UK there's Araldite, globally 3M Scotch-Weld, Loctite (but those are usually more industrial use) and I'm sure there's a fairly generic one in Germany too.
what's a good alternative for "less reinforced" epoxy? when i used JB weld, i figured it'd be fine to let it harden and sand way the blobs on the outside. i ended up having to take a full palm sander to it to even get it down a bit.
Thanks for both getting the data, and going beyond the data to what applications the "bad" tested adhesives are actually good for. Interesting to see the material-related results.
Thanks Thomas!
Since I am a bit professional in the field of plastics, I would have to comment that any kind of bonding is depending a lot on preparation of surface i.e. it has to be dust clean, de-greased and without any other contaminants. Apart from that superglue (cyanoacrylat) is reacting with airmoisture, that starts curing process. I could see that some of the guys in the comments are using quite industrial grades of bonding material that I know from my time in wind turbine blade manufacturing and that is great. Just please remember to be safe, also when we are talking about use of epoxy (that personally adore as manufacturing material) and PUR. So keep creating but be safe as well!
Hope you're doing better! Glad to have you back
For PLA, acrylic glue (solvent based cement for glueing plexiglas/PMMA) works well - it seems the solvent used for PMMA/acrylic also dissolves PLA, and creates a strong weld bond. This is a one-component glue that's sold in the hardware store as a squeeze tube, so it's a bit less hassle than 2-component glues.
Scigrip #16 Fast set
Great rundown Tom! Love seeing some data. I think you did great to work past the mic issues!
I wish you would have tested E6000 because I use it for a lot of things. Since it is basically the same thing as plastic model glue (at least it feels and smells the same), it works well for plastics. My guess is that is would be a good compromise between the two types you've shown. Probably stronger than the silicone/VHB/hotglue, but it is certainly not as strong as superglue or 2-part glues.
Thank you!!! I love when you do these kind of videos! You're like the only one answering these questions that come up in my head.
Contact cement aka shoe glue would have been an interesting comparison to see. Since it's not a rigid glue, I can see it working well with TPU
You're giving Project Farm competition! Very elaborate testing.
Kudos for the edition! the mini Thomas as a narrator was a nice workaround
I use ABS slurry (ABS dissolved in Acetone) as an adhesive for PLA. I think it works really well and would be interested in how it holds up to comparative testing in future videos.
Use Scigrip #16 Fast set acrylic for PLA. It sets fast and it's strong. It welds the material together.
This is great timing, I'm gluing up a PETG project this weekend. Glad I chose epoxy for the project.
Absolutely love the way you have a question, find different possible solutions, test them, compile data, summarize results. I think this is exemplary of some of your best work on this channel. I would love to see you devise testing jigs for tensile and shear loadings that you talked about. Keep up the good work!
Thank You‼️ for once again being the one doing this tedious boring (but important!) research for so many people 🥰 Thank You!
With the advent of PLA+, almost no one uses PETG anymore. I print almost exclusively in petg because almost all my prints are functional so I'm SO happy you covered it.
I have used Testors model glue on PLA. It seems to do a decent enough job. Also contact cement as long as you have a nice flat surface to join together.
Great! I finally have an answer what I can glue PETG and PCTG with.
I miss two glues i used with PLA in the past: PVC-glue (the stuff that is used to glue PVC water pipes etc.) and Bison Kit Adhesive. Both work very well.
Yeah, the mini-Thomas was pretty awesome. I'm glad you were able to apply a patch to this, keeping the same content. I've watched this a few times now. I'd love to see another series of videos that maybe focus on a specific type of adhesive. So one video for different types of super glue (my favorite, I love CA), and a different video for JB Weld or whatever. I'm not a fan of epoxy, so it's nice to have my CA bias ("super glue is very good") proven with a visually fun and scientific method. I don't often have curvy/gaps in my parts, so it's nice to see that CA generally ends up being stronger than the parts themselves.
There's two more tests your really need to do to see the differences between the different glues: pulling directly against the glue surface, and dropping things from a moderate height.
I say this because CA glue is SO strong for forces that are pulling on the joint - but it's also brittle and tends to shatter when subjected to shearing forces. So CA glue is fine for most things, until you drop it.
Also: I love that you ran up against the challenges of ADR and just nerped out of it. :D
I like and now only use Weldon 16 for PLA, hands down the best but probably not the best stuff for you. CA and epoxy are good too if surface prep is good.
Underrated post. Weldon 16 was a game changer for me.
honestly dont know why you would use anything other than weld on #16 on PLA. Easy application, no mixing, cures in a couple of minutes and makes a stronger bond than CA glue without having to use an activator or filling agent
Something I feel you are missing is standard wood glue. I use it ALOT on my bigger projects and it have never failed me..
Thanks for doing all this work for us.
I've been liking JB Weld's light activated cyanoacrylate adhesive. The light source with the LED on the dispenser makes it easy to control the run out.
I've also finally started using the 3D Gloop! I bought a while ago and never really used. So long as you clamp the part it work amazingly well (the PLA breaks first).
VHB is a pressure-sensitive adhesive, so really needs to be clamped to get the best results. It still won't work well under shear though.
Yes, VHB is designed for pull force, not "twist" .. it's actually designed to fail when twisted as part of the easy to remove property of VHB
Was just planning a project and this came out at the perfect time. Thanks!
I just used some JBweld 2 part epoxy for plastic on some models I needed to glue the arms and legs onto. I knew I didn't want to use super glue because it can't gap fill and it just runs all over my fingers. Awesome video!
Thank you Thomas. I myself have sometimes struggled with this issue over the years. I have settled with mechanical joints when I need parts to be strongly held together, be it fasteners (screws) or other 3D printed parts and hot glue when the parts will not endure high stress.
Great video, any chance you could do TPU ?
I found a few videos about it but it's mostly US testers and we can't really find the same glues in europe.
Thanks :)
ModgePodge works surprisingly well for my PLA gluing. It also dries clear.
What I find useful to increase the strength of bonds of two part epoxy (when transparent), is to go beyond the joint and around the area surrounding the joint. It helps a lot reinforcing the print.
It is odd that the ‘None’ control performed better than the adhesives, considering that some of the tests broke at the plastic rather than the bond line. I wonder it VampCaff’s comment about the bonding agent affecting the plastic is a cause or if there are other factors involved? Since I print functional parts, bond or plastic degradation over time would be an important consideration in the choice of adhesives.
Thanks for the work, Tom, appreciate it.
My go-to "glue" for 3D prints is "Plastruct Bondene" plastic cement. You have to use the "Bondene" variety of Plastruct cement...the regular Plastruct cement is not as versatile. It solvent welds the stuff together. You will sooner tear the printed piece apart at the layer lines than at the glue joint. It works for PLA, ABS, PETG and certainly more. Keep in mind that the stuff dries extremely quickly, so, make sure you put the cap back onto the bottle right away. Super glue (cyanoacrylate) works decently on 3D prints, hot glue guns work great for certain applications and even various thermal welding techniques can work just fine. But the cleanest and strongest joint will be achieved with a solvent welding cement (especially if combined with a joint design that allows the parts to physically interlock).
A couple of weeks ago I glued a screw made from PLA that I use for a desk mount for a gamecontroller and which broke in the thread close to the shank. I glued it with Loctite and I used the screw several times already and I always put a lot of torque on it, but it didn't break again. So it looks to me that Loctite is a very good adhesive for PLA as well.
To add to your point about VHB tape at 13:27, I've had VHB tape holding up a 3D printed phone mount on my car's dash for the past 3 years without any issues. The dash is close to vertical so the force acting on the tape is more of a sheer force than the ones in your test. I think that with the tape also sticking very well to the car means that VHB tape is a great option for this use and maybe better than glues. Plus VHB tape is removable-ish so for something in a car that you dont wanna use glue on its a great choice
VHB is designed for pull not "twisting"
That's why it failed in this test.
It's actually designed to release if twisted.
Congrats on getting the new studio setup
3m has a primer for low energy plastics as well, makes basically any normal glue or tape work really well
You can also use heptane or other liquid alkanes. The 3M primer is just heptane with triphenylphosphine added as a curing agent for superglue. So if you're using something other than superglue, plain heptane should work just as well.
One thing I've been curious about is using JB weld as a print bed surface. I use it to fill in holes in my PEI/steel sheets when parts adhere a little too well and it rips chunks of the PEI off, particularly with ABS where I need maximum adhesion particularly with larger prints.
Thanks again, as usual, what are the great testing. I was surprised at the Super glue, but the results speak for themselves, thank you.
As someone who does this kind of materials testing as part of my job, this was really well done and dang that was a lot of work! The only thing I'm going to ding you on is error bars! :) Standard deviation is fine, but I prefer either 90 or 95% confidence intervals! :)
Love how you used the prusa as a spool holder, most expensive spool holder.
There are LSE primers available for low surface energy materials like PP, PE, even teflon apparently. It's supposed to increase bonding on these materials. I used it to glue magnets into PETG using "rubber reinforced" superglue. It was called "3770 primer". Found it on eBay. Don't know how much impact it makes, and I don't know if printed plastic is considered LSE.
Super glue gel with activator spray to fill up any gaps works great. The gel does not has the hassle by "running" away.
The green screen thing was really creative and a really undisruptive way of correcting the mistake! Greetings from your neighbors to the west
3DGloop looks really good for joining parts with. It is, of course, a specific product for a specific plastic. Haven't tried it myself yet but it looks very interesting. But they do have PLA, PET and ABS gloop.
I was surprised to not see 3d gloop on these tests. Stuff is amazing
Pro tip.... that "gap filler" for the superglue. It's just baking soda. It will dry any CA glue "superglue" on contact and give it structure. They actually use this technique to fill large holes in helicopter blades. It can fill seriously large holes this way. Just add CA glue and sprinkle the baking soda on then rub/ blow it off. It seriously comes in handy.
I had a i3 knock off printer break a few years ago, but my new Prusa MK3S+ is arriving on Monday. Pretty excited to get back into the game.
Thanks for all the time, materials and effort you put into all your content. Much appreciated.
Hi, nice test, I came from a plastic industries out of the old day's , made Signs from Acrylic, vacuum forming and a lot of other things. So got some old stuff at my place Röhm 117 glue for Acrylic and Methylene Chloride, those work incredible good with PLA and PET, you can also use acetone and the gel form of superglue.
Like to see more of your tests!
Kind regards,
Tom
Nice video.
I would have liked to see a comparison to heating the pla an melting the joint together instead of gluing it.
Model glue. Direct extruder mount I printed in 2 pieces because I just couldn't get the line up right. Glued, clamped and left over night and the stepper mount was solid. This was Overture PLA+
VHB Tape is a hell of an adhesive for 3D printed parts - you just have to read the specs and get the right one!
I'm printing (in PETG) mounts for a little electronic dashboard device for motorcycles and those attach with VHB tape so well that a) it's nearly impossible to remove (unless you use the right technique, which involves dental floss), and b) the tape comes off the aluminium on the motorcycle side first.
The trick to finding the right VHB tape is knowing the surface energy of your material, wether it's high or low. 3M has pretty good documentation on that.
Oh, and then you of course need to get the right thickness, so that the contact surface is as large as possible. For your curved test, you should have used tape that touches all edges, or even more, then you should have seen a much better result and no peeling back.
I bought some ‘acrylic plastics cement’ seems to bond really well to PLA even though it’s meant for PETG
It supposedly fuses the plastics together by surface softening
this is a great presentation. as a followup though: mixing super glue with baking soda has very interesting properties. it crystalizes to an extremely hard surface : on many occasions I initially glue with super glue to just hold the parts, the with a wet finger dip it into baking soda and fill the gaps with the dampened baking soda and then use the crazy glue on that. it becomes a material much harder and stiffer than the pla plastic.
Omg tiny Tom is a cool and unique narrator, you need to him back for future videos
wow that blue shelf in the background is a work of art...god bless Germany
I can confirm Krazy Glue works well on Overture silk PLA. I printed an air raid siren rotor and glued the parts together, and it survived 12,000RPM perfectly fine. I've tried to pull the parts apart, and couldn't.
Can you believe it man? The G+ community years ago capped out around 500k or so members, and I am pretty sure at least half of them were bots. You...singularly...have surpassed that by a significant margin. Can't wait to see 500k :)
I prefer to use my handheld printer pen and repair with the same filament I printed with. I’m sure in a pinch you could extrude with your hotend right onto the break and quickly squeeze the parts together. Or even use your desolder gun and melt filament into the part.
Can you test that also?
I liked your spin on fixing a messed up recording. That worked well.
Invest in a a green screen and that'll make your production look so much smoother (no white outline on your inset overlay)
I like your scientific approach, keep the good job!
IDK about you, but my glue gun and other industrial glue guns function at 200c. Techbond makes tons of different stick blends. Half of them are true high temp that don't even begin to soften at ambient temperatures. Their highest temp stick for cardboard is very stiff, almost like a filament plastic.
Very using and pragmatic information. Thanks for going through all the effort to do these comparisons.
Hope progress with new studio going well and you are settling in. Moving always more effort that anticipated.
love my hotglue for printe parts, but nice to see the alternatives
Baking soda is a great filler with CA glue. I’ve used it to fix nut grooves on guitars. It sets solid and durable.
good to see you recovered well :)
I found that 3M double stick Gray tape that it say can hold something like 30 lbs does not stick well at all. But the Clear 15 lbs 3M tape works well. I have only use the clear version on my Dayton Exciter speaker to stick to my cardboard cone but this works great. This version is the tape that comes on the Dayton Exciter speakers when you buy them.
In the US, for PETG/PLA you can use Weld-On 3. It is like a solvent which softens and joins the pieces. Very strong bond.
Thank you for running those tests!
I would really love to see some tests cross-material! For when you need PLA for it's properties but maybe a tpu hinge or flex parts.
We use Loctite 3D Universal Bonder at work and love it! Mostly PLA and ABS prints. I wish it came with more mixing tips though since it’s a 2 part adhesive.
From my experience, going over the broken part with soldering iron, has a high chance to top the strength chart.
Set temperature somewhere in the range of 110-210 C (depending on the stage, experiment), start with higher temp and use pointy tip and stab parts together couple times, then lower temperature and use knife tip to smooth the edges.
I'm surprised I did not see any comments suggesting it.
Proper heat for layer adhesion is a big factor here too. If the room you are printing is too cold, the fans are too high or your nozzle temp is just not hot enough, then your prints will be weaker. Also of course the design of the print itself matters a lot too. Honestly 3d printing even with just PLA at 100% infill is very strong. When above 1/4 inch thicknesses. As will basically all things plastic, you need to go thicker and bigger to have really good strength. However not everything needs to be strong and that's where 3d printing really shines. You can make incredibly complex prints with very little infill, using clever infill techniques, to make insanely light things. But that isn't to say that they are so weak, that if you look at them wrong they will break but even if they do, it's relatively easy to glue or just so cheap you can print another one 😅
The phrase 'flow happy' is now part of my everyday parlance!
I am very happy with UHU Plast for PLA. Sticks like pitch, lasts and makes strong parts.
CA glue (particularly if you look at woodworking supplies) can be used in different consistencies and have an accelerator spray that may be of use for immediate set up. You can check that out too
Excellent video - I'm glad to see my use of a meme adhesive is not in vain! 😂 I had to use JB Weld to fasten some PETG parts together and it does great. I did notice tackiness/softness as well initially, though I thought that might be due to the fact the tubes were several years old since I opened them and figured the activator might have aged. Eventually, it hardened more.
I do mainly structural prints in PLA+ and have been using super glue gel from Harbor Freight. I have tried most of the major brands available here in the US but the HF bonds better (failure of print material before the adhesive) and is cheap. (3.99 US for 10 tubes). Their gel is perfect for what I do as it is thinner than most gels but thick enough to fill gaps and inconsistencies when needed.
The "mini me" save on the video did a good job of saving the video without being too corny.
Did some prop work at my old job, we used hotglue all the time, you can get some specialty types that, believe it or not, are heat resistant.
Used some for a qi charger in my car, it handled being in the car during the summer at 30°C (outside)
Before I had a enclosed printer i used PETG too. But PETG is hard to clue and it can damage the build surface easily.
I now have a Voron 2.4 and print in ABS only.
ABS is strong and can resist high temperatures too. My go to material for now.
Yes I did learned something from this video Thomas, I have been using super glue for glueing models together, I did use resin in the past as well, and that did also worked pretty great
God VHB tape still haunts my nightmares. I worked at a testing lab, doing mechanical testing. One of the tests I ran a lot was peel testing, and that VHB was a nightmare to get off the substrate after the test. Usually involved at least N-Hexane,steel wool, and a razor blade. Half the time I just through the stainless test panels in the scrap bin whenever I got VHB.
Great video! For PLA I'm more or less only using Scotch Gel glue, yes the green tube you find in every supermarket. It contains acetone so it's like fusing PLA using acetone but much cleaner and easier to control. Note that there is a stronger version of it with a red cap that doesn't work because it doesn't contain acétone.
I swear by Scigrip #16 Fast set acrylic for PLA. It sets fast and it's strong. It welds the material together but it stinks.
What about the superglue gel, l use Pattex Gold Gel. Give also some time to correct the parts before its stucks on the spot. It's harden out on moister and fills the caps very good.
When working with CA glue you really need accelerator spray. It's like magic, especially when you want to fill gaps. It makes the glue harden so fast that it can't run away. When you start with a more gel-like CA glue, you can even do things like make connectors just by soldering wires to pin headers, pouring superglue on the solder connection and spraying the accelerator. It encases the solder joint in a transparent mass and the best thing is you can still see the wire colors. When glueing things together you can put the glue on one part and spray the other part and then press the 2 parts together.