Acrylic adhesive?

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spugm1r3

[H]ard|Gawd
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Sep 28, 2012
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I'm looking at edge bonding some sheets of acrylic for a case mod and I'm curious if anyone had any recommendations from personal experience. I've seen some recommendations for Weld-on, but searching Google for the answer is only as reliable as the question, so I figured I would ask here.

The seams would be visible, so it's important that the adhesive be either hidden or aesthetically pleasing. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT6Ow_cBTps

I found this as well:
Acrylic Solvent: Done properly, an acrylic solvent can be used to bond two pieces of acrylic such that the resulting piece is essentially a single seamless piece of acrylic. However, it is difficult to properly apply solvent to repair a crack as opposed to joining separate pieces of acrylic. In addition, acrylic solvent is really nasty stuff. An easy to find brand of appropriate acrylic solvent is IPS Weld-on #3 or #4.
Epoxy: There are many kinds of epoxy and many do not adhere well to acrylic, but epoxy that bonds acrylic is available in most hardware stores. For best results apply the epoxy to both sides of the crack. Unfortunately epoxies that form the strongest bonds with acrylic are not transparent, they're generally amber or off-white in color. Easy to find brands are Devcon Plastic Welder or Loctite Plastic Epoxy.
Cyanoacrylate: Colloquially called "super glue" or "instant adhesive", an appropriate cyanoacrylate will form a decent acrylic bond and most cyanoacrylate adhesives are transparent. I'd probably apply it from above, allowing capillary action to draw it down into the crack. For acrylic, I'd recommend Loctite 401 Prism Instant Adhesive.
 
When I did acrylic fabrication we just used plain old methylene chloride and applied it with a hypodermic syringe. When you mention seams, are you trying to glue two smaller sheets edge-to-edge to make a larger sheet or gluing joints at right angles and such? Edge-to-edge gluing won't have much strength and the seams won't look good. Just use one larger piece and fabricate from that. If you are gluing smaller pieces at right angles to each other the solvent method is excellent.

Saw cuts need to be really accurate and square and made with a very fine sawblade. Try not to melt/burn the plastic when cutting. The solvent just melts the two interfaces and they become one. Any place the solvent runs out will melt the acrylic and be a flaw so use as little as possible. The joints will only look as good as the cuts you made to make them and need to fit tightly since the solvent is drawn into the joint by capillary action..My experience was in days before OSHA got involved so it was really easy to get the solvents and supplies. Just be prepared to hold the pieces in place until the solvent dries--generally a couple of minutes. Try some test pieces first to get an idea of flow volume and drying time. Close and accurate fit is really the key to it all.
 
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