Even though the concept of urethane adhesive hasn’t been known by all, yet it’s more closely related to our life than we can imagine. Urethane adhesive is everywhere, in our daily life and work. Hence, it’s worth of writing an article about Urethane adhesive.
The Definition
To better understand urethane adhesive, let’s learn a little bit about Urethane:
Urethane is a colorless and odorless combination of both amides and esters and carbonic acid.
Urethane adhesive is a kind a glue that can applied to bond various kinds of materials and even dissimilar materials, which is produced through the reaction injection molding (RIM) process.
Importance of urethane adhesive in various industries
Urethane adhesive can be made from a wide variety of urethane raw materials, such as polyols, isocyanates, chain extenders, crosslinkers, and other additives.
Urethane adhesive has played an important role in various industries. With great structural bonding feature, it bonds great to most plastics, wood, concrete, rubber and much more.
People like to use it for its high peel strength as well as medium to high shear strength. What’s more, it’s flexible, durable and elastic. There is no doubt that it has been an excellent choice for structural applications.
Urethane adhesive has been widely applied within various fields, such as sealing, roofing, tiling, aerospace laminating, flexible packaging, upholstery and flooring.
Types of Urethane Adhesive
- 1 Poly(hydroxyurethane) adhesives and coatings:
- 2 3M™ Scotch-Weld™ Urethane Adhesive
What’s the difference between urethane adhesive and epoxy and silicone adhesives?
There are three main adhesives widely applied in the industry. Namely, urethane, epoxy, and silicone. Which adhesive is better? Let’s dive into their pros and cons.
1 Urethane adhesive
It’s flexible, durable and elastic. Typically, surface preparation is not required.
2 Epoxy
It is the strongest structural adhesive that can bond to a variety of substrates, but hard and brittle.
3 Silicone
It does great in heat resistance, and has been widely applied in medical area, but with lower adhesion strength.
In conclude, urethane adhesive is most flexible, epoxy adhesive is of high strength, and silicone adhesive is heat resistant, often requiring primers.
What benefits can they bring us?
- flexible
- Resistant to oil or chemicals
- Heat resistant
- Gap filling and leveling
- Retaining
- Sealing
- Threadlocking
As we can see, urethane adhesive can provide great boning and protection. Though it still has some limitations, like reduced resistance to solvents and high temperatures, not being as strong or chemically resistant as epoxy adhesive, etc. Yet, we believe that with more research and experiments, it will become more and more flexible and mature .
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