Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Solvent Bonding Polycarbonate to Polycarbonate - Update

It didn't work well. Unfortunately, it seems the bond created was very porous (see image below). After curing in a fume hood for 18 hours, the surface was still a bit tacky (after pulling the two pieces apart). The bond surface was abot 1/4" square and held roughly 20 lbf before seperating. It may have been stronger had it cured all the way, hard to know for sure. I only tried a few samples, so perhaps there are process tweaks I could make that would improve the efficacy of the cyclohexanone bond, but at this point it seems a less than ideal solvent for bonding polycarbonate to itself.