Glue recommendation for PE?

Hi,

Got some small parts to glue that I think are PE. I’ve tried Crazy Glue, Gorilla Glue, Cold Weld and so far nothing seems to work. Any recommendations for a commercially available glue (like at a hardware store) that may work? Epoxy?

Parts are just some interior plastic parts in my car. Nothing that take a huge amount of strain, but there is some load on the part and not much surface area (clean cracked apart on a 40+ year old fastner).

Thanks,

R

One of the great characteristics of PE, and PP for that matter, it that nothing sticks to it.

Your best bet is to mechanically roughen your bonding surfaces. The glues “adheres” to the nooks and crannies.

In manufacturing, you would use a corona treatment to get a bond.

You have four choices (and a fifth bonus option):

  1. 3M Scotch Weld. Basically the only glue that sticks to PP/PE. You’ll have to fixture the part up, and it takes like a day to do its magic.

  2. A heat plate or flame, and hold the parts together.

  3. You might be able to use spray foam and a fabric mesh on the back side of the part, but it might not stick.

  4. Mechanical fasteners. Ugly, but fast and effective.

  5. New part, or do nothing.

Hmmm… parts are small so spay foam and fasteners won’t work.

I see Scotch Weld is a 2 part epoxy. Would it be similar to another kind that is more available (doubt my local Home Depot has 3M Scotch products)?

R

Doubt it. The hardware store epoxies are packaged in PP and PE containers, and you can cap, store, uncap, and reuse them. Which might mean the epoxy doesn’t stick to the material you need it to stick to. Scotch Weld kind of sucks to use, but it works, no question.

Good point. Didn’t think of the container meaning it wouldn’t work on the material. Some epoxies are in metal tubes though… any hint it might work?

R

I don’t have any personal experience with this product, but they say it handles PE:

Looks like you can get it at Home Depot:

Let us know what you end up with!

Not sure what kind of overlapping the parts have against what they’re supposed to bond to but with PE you might have the best luck heating up the hidden or overlapping area and squishing it into place (or if you need more “real estate” to squish, I’ve used cut strips from a cleaned out milk jug as an extra substrate. Heat, force and hold. :slight_smile:

BUT, if you really want the best bond, use PE/PP adhesive - it’s a chemical bond that breaks down the plastic as you press the parts together, then molecularly rebuilds the two pieces into one - it’s awesome stuff but is probably only available at specialty places (we used to use Cadillac Plastics in Detroit and there’s Total Plastics here in B’more).

What about solvent-welding? Seems a lot less scary than it sounds.

https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2012/08/30/tech-tip-solvent-welding-plastics/

3M Panel bond 08115, besides glueing just about anything, also works with sanded PE and PP, it is commonly used for car body panels.