Bonding Rubber with Cyanoacrylates

Cyanoacrylates were first introduced commercially in the late 1960s and into the consumer market in the 1970s. Since then super glues have been used and are continuing to be used in both industry and around the home for a huge variety of applications. There is now a bewildering range of cyanoacrylates available to both the home user and particularly the industrial user. 

Cyanoacrylates offer an unbeatable combination of speed, simplicity and strength particularly when faced with the need to join widely different materials. They will bond metals, plastics, ceramics, wood, leather, paper, cork and rubber in any combination without heat treatment and for most applications without the need for surface pre-treatment. 

There are many types of rubber available but most can be bonded with cyanoacrylates. 

Polychloroprene, nitrile, natural rubber (polyisoprene), styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) and butyl are amongst the types of rubber that can be readily bonded with cyanoacrylates. Ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) and fluroelastomers (Viton, registered trade mark of DuPont) can also be bonded, although only with specific grades of cyanoacrylate. Silicone rubber and thermoplastic rubber (Santoprene, registered trade mark of Advanced Elastomer Systems) can be bonded with the aid of a primer. Typical applications and techniques for bonding different grades of rubber are discussed in Section 10.11. 

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Assemblies joined with cyanoacrylate adhesives exhibit good long-term durability, particularly when the materials are somewhat flexible, such as rubbers and most plastics (see Fig. 7). Bonded lap shear specimens have been aged outdoors for 7 years with good retention of strength (see Table 8). 

Cyanoacrylate adhesives will bond most substrates to themselves and to each other. The few adherends which do not bond well with standard adhesives are polyethylene, polypropylene, EPDM rubber, plasticized PVC, teflon, and acidic surfaces. A few manufacturers sell modified adhesives which will bond some of these materials, such as EPDM and flexible PVC. Adhesion to low surface energy plastics like polyolefins and Teflon can be improved by an etching or oxidizing treatment. 

Silicone rubber is difficult to bond with cyanoacrylates. The adhesive does not wet the surface properly without special surface treatment, due to the very low surface energy, and therefore will not bond. Polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polytetrafluoro ethylene (PTFE) and acetal plastics and Santoprene rubber also fall into this category and cannot be bonded without prior surface preparation. 

On the exterior of the vehicles, rubber profiles around windows and doors and the trunk lid are "lap bonded with cyanoacrylate adhesives because continuously extruded profiles cannot be used for sharp comers. To obtain effective sealing and better sliding in the case of sliding windows, these profiles are flocked by means of polyurethane-based flocking adhesives. The lenses of headlamps are joined to the housing by polyamide or polyurethane hot-melt adhesives and epoxy resins. The layers of laminated safety glass are bonded with a film based on poly(vinyl butyral). 

As with most elastomers, natural rubber can be readily bonded with cyanoacrylates although in these trials [2] the adhesion achieved with the toughened cyanoacrylates was relatively low (Table 4.7). 

Nitrile rubber is generally easy to bond with cyanoacrylates (Table 4.8) and the use of a primer is not normally necessary. Of the other adhesives tested, the two-part acrylics and the UV acrylics showed promising adhesion. 

Figure 9.3 Effect of water on metal lap shears bonded with rubber-toughened cyanoacrylates...

Cyanoacrylates can be used to bond many materials, including most thermoplastics and even the more difficult ones like polyethylene, polypropylene, and ethylene-propylene-diene ( EPDM ) rubber. The best results are obtained with close contact and narrow bonds (some formulations have limited ability to bridge large or irregular gaps between the surfaces). 

Polystyrene Although polystyrene is usually bonded by solvent cementing, it can be bonded with vinyl acetate/vinyl chloride solution adhesives, acrylics, polyurethanes, unsaturated polyesters, epoxies, urea-formaldehyde, rubber-base adhesives, polyamide (Versamid-base), polymethylmethacrylate, and cyanoacrylates. The adhesives should be medium-to-heavy viscosity and room-temperature and contact-pressure curing. An excellent source is a Monsanto Company technical information bulletin which recommends particular commercial adhesives for bonding polystyrene to a number of different surfaces. Adhesives are recommended in the fast-, medium-, and slow-setting ranges (10). 

Suggested adhesives include modified acrylics, epoxies, polyesters, resorcinol-formaldehyde, furane, phenol-formaldehyde, polyvinyl formal-phenolic, polyvinyl butyral, nitrile rubber-phenolic, polyisobutylene rubber, polyurethane rubber, reclaimed rubber, melamine-formaldehyde, epoxy-phenolic, and cyanoacrylates. For maximum adhesion primers should be used. Nitrile-phenoUcs give excellent bonds if cured under pressure at temperatures of 149 C. Lower-strength bonds are obtained with most rubber-based adhesives. 

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