Gluing corian

[John Coloccia]

I'm stepping up my CNC game a bit and would like to start playing around with Corian tooling plates and vacuum jigs. Does anyone have experience gluing Corian? I'm assuming that epoxy will work fine, but I've never worked with it so I don't know.

A friend turned me on to plastic tooling board, but I can't seem to find any distributors in my area for ANY of the various manufacturers. I'm also open to considering other materials, but Corian seems like the easiest thing to do right now.

[Curt Harms]

Just playing around, I used system3 5 minute epoxy and it seemed to hold fine. I sanded any gloss or other coating off first. I did have some joints fail easily but I think that's because I didn't sand first.

[Curt Stivison]

I made some vacumn jigs for my cnc out of corian that worked great. I used thick ca glue.
Curt

[David Werkheiser]

Call up some local Corian fabricators and see if they will sell you one of their small kits that use a standard caulk gun, cost is about $30. It includes 2 or 3 mixing tips and the 2 part epoxy. You may have to call a few shops because you have to be licensed to buy Corian products from the large suppliers

[Ken Fitzgerald]

John,

I would bet Keith Outten could answer your question as he makes a LOT of corian signs.

[Grant Wilkinson]

I've done some small corian pieces - pens, bowls and platters. So far, medium, flex CA has held together well.

[Keith Outten]

John,

I use CA glue for small Corian glue ups like pen blanks. I use silicone adhesive or epoxy for large pieces and I use Dupont's color matched adhesive when the glue joint needs to be invisible and for all exterior signs. For color fill projects I use Dupont adhesive or epoxy with a color mix. Note, you should always sand surfaces that you want to join and clean both surfaces with alcohol.

You don't have to be certified to purchase 1/4" thick Corian or Dupont adhesive. Half inch or three quarter inch thick Corian requires a certification or you can register as a sign company and purchase any product. If you register as a sign company you cannot produce counter tops as Dupont will not honor the warranty unless you are a certified installer.

[Keith Outten]

The Dupont adhesive guns are a proprietary design. They are available in two sizes large and small. Both guns use a sacrificial tip that mixes the adhesive with the hardener when its applied. I have never seen a Dupont adhesive that will fit a standard caulking gun, possibly because they don't have the means to mix the glue and hardener. The large Dupont tube is much larger than a standard caulking tube.

I use the small gun but I can't remember what I paid for it as it was a long time ago. The current cost of the small glue cartridges from my local Distributor is $9.00 each in any color.
.

[John Coloccia]

Thanks, Keith. I actually was able to find a supplier for tooling board.

Tada:
http://www.curbellplastics.com/prototyping-tooling/

They have a distributor local to me. I'm waiting to hear back on pricing and availability.

Good info re: signing up as a sign manufacturer.

Just FYI, Keith...and I'm sure you know this already...this kind of tooling plastic comes in lots of different densities, and some of them work very well for signs apparently.

It's good to know that I can just use epoxy and silicone for my purposes. I'm currently experimenting to see what works best for me. Fixturing for things like guitar necks has proven to be far more difficult than just building the stupid guitar by hand.

[Keith Outten]

John,

Believe it or not I never use any of the traditional sign materials in my shop. I use Corian almost exclusively, even though the price is a bit higher I have found that my labor costs are less so Corian has proven to be the best material both in quality and cost for my sign work. I use Corian for shop jigs and fixtures as well BUT lately I have been using a lot of PVC sheet for fixtures and some sign jobs. PVC is available everywhere and it is a snap to glue up since you can use the same adhesive you use for PVC pipe which you can get at the Borg. I was lucky enough to find a local shop that gave me a truck load of PVC drops for free. I will most likely have to purchase their project drops in the future but it should be a huge savings over full sheets.

One word of caution.....I stopped cutting PVC sheet on my table saw awhile back because it tends to stick to the sides of the blade and kickback. Possibly using a saw blade with a minimal number of teeth and a wide rake would reduce the chance of a kickback but I started cutting PVC on my band saw or my panel saw if the cuts are long and wide.

[John Coloccia]

Well, all of these options are proving much too expensive. Maybe down the line, but it will cost me thousands of $$$ just to experiment and work out the kinks.

I think the next option is to simply use MDF. I'm thinking that if I give a coat of shellac or varnish that it will probably seal well enough to get an effective vacuum.