Design and manufacturing engineers have many options when it comes to fastening methods. These options include mechanical fasteners such as nuts and bolts, tapes, welding and adhesives. Adhesive bonding is the fastest-growing method for product assembly in many industries because it offers significant advantages over conventional fastening methods. The advantages include reduction of weight, bonding dissimilar materials, evenly distributing stress, sealing under pressure and improved appearance.
Adhesives are used in an extensive range of applications; therefore, there are many types of product chemistries available to suit a variety of product and process needs. Choosing the proper adhesive for an application can be a daunting task, especially when coupled with choosing the optimal substrate. As the worldwide leader in adhesive technology bonding, Henkel has devoted many resources and thousands of hours to evaluating the strength of adhesives on a wide variety of materials. This allows design engineers in search of the most appropriate substrate and adhesive combination to spend less time screening adhesive candidates, and more time focusing on introducing their product to the market faster and more efficiently.
Three comprehensive design guides created by Henkel present a detailed synopsis of the bondability of a variety of plastics, metals, rubber and thermoplastic elastomers. The Design Guide for Bonding Plastics and The Design Guide for Bonding Rubber and Thermoplastic Elastomers present bond strengths of a variety of adhesives. Henkel has evaluated 30 and 26 of the most common types of plastics and rubber or thermoplastics elastomers, respectively. The effects of surface treatments, common modifiers and fillers on the adhesion strength of various chemistries were also evaluated. In addition to adhesive performance, these bonding guides provide a brief overview of each chemistry as well as adhesive joint design principles that should be considered in the design stages of part development in order to increase the overall integrity of the product.
The Design Guide for Bonding Metals presents the bond strength of six common types of metals and describes the effects of environmental conditioning, such as salt fog, condensing humidity and heat aging. Other testing on metals substrates includes the use of activators, heat curing parameters and hot strength curves.
Please visit these substrate guides to aid in the design and adhesive qualification process of your product. Other Henkel resources include various marketing design guides, detailed Technical Data Sheets, as well as knowledgeable technicians and engineers who are available to discuss your specific application.
Click here to view The Design Guides at Henkel's Online Catalog Center.
