UV Cure Glues & Glass

[Site Man]

OLD FORUM POSTS

Posted by lee littlewood on April 28, 2003

Just a note about a "funny" experience we were next to: Savoy Studios brought us a slew of peach beveled glass pieces to silver. This we did, backing up with varnish because they were going to be glued to sheets of clear glass for room dividers. All tested on a sample piece, of course, and okay. When they went to glue the bevels to glass with UV cure glue - nada. Eventually they got the pieces to stick by exposing them to sunlight for 1/2 hour or so. The problem was that the test piece was on a piece of 1/2" glass, but the finished pieces had to be done on laminated glass for code reasons. Turns out the lamination material is a great UV absorber....
The good news was that the UV glue used didn't attack our varnish

.

Mike Jackson

Lee,
Thanks for the note. I will have to test this glue on two or three different glass pieces, I guess, especially knowing almost all doors and front window glass is either laminated or tempered. It might work fine on 1/4" plate glass for interior framing.

When we were doing all the glass art pieces, we always felt we were taking two steps forward and then one step backwards. Steady resistance from somewhere or something...but progress was made in the mean time.

Take care,
Mike Jackson

Carol

Lee, Mike,
Would glue adhere more readily if the non laminated glass is the one on "top" when exposing to UV? UV could penetrate that glass, right? Or am I missing something?
That UV glue for glass is something! I'm glued fancy handmade winegoblets whose stems broke and have then put the goblets in the dishwasher and the glue holds fine. Pretty amazing.

Mike Jackson

Hi Carol,
The tech at the PacerTech's industrial division suggested using UV cure glues for the abalone. The stuff I found at Loon Outdoors was sold in the perfect sized quantities for our use, and the light is small and cheap.

Normally, abalone and pearl is applied to a small oval or "window" in the almost completed project. There would be an outline to contain the pearl, and execss pearl would be normally hidden by the rest of the lettering, oulines, shadows and so forth. I think I have two concerns here.

1: Need a strong enough light to work from the front of the glass to expose the open oval window area. Lee's comments about the clear plastic barrier absorbing the UV source might be a problem here. Any painted area protecting the glue from the front exposure probably won't cure quickly...or at all.

2: When looking on the "work side", my concern would be whether you could get the glue to cure "under" the abalone or pearl. I suspect you could get the glue that squishes out of the abalone to cure around the edges and that might be enough, especially if the open windows had been cured from the front side. A super bright UV light might be needed to penetrate through the abalone or pearl to cure that area if it turned out to be a problem.

These are all things that need testing. I like the concept, but there may be "barriers".

Mike

Lee Littlewood

Carol's question - why didn't the UV expose thru the face of the glass if it couldn't get thru from the back? I'm not really sure. The silvering we did was just on part of the bevels - maybe they needed all of the glass to be bonded securely. It was peach glass and that may have had an effect. It wasn't our job, but i remember Savoy saying that they ended up gluing the bevels on and then caarefully carrying the glass sheets out to the sidewalk to get enough sun to cure.