Adhesive advice

Everything Else
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Any recommendations on adhesives to use for gluing acrylic to acrylic? I’m primarily making jewelry for myself so far and have some layered pieces in mind, but want to have an adhesive on hand to assemble them before I cut. I’d love something that dries clear because I have a few pieces that require layering clear or transparent layers.
And what about acrylic to metal? For adding earring backs and brooch backs. Thank you!

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I recommend weld-on 3 or 4 for acrylic to acrylic or acrylic to PET-G. I use Locktite superglue for acrylic to most everything else, though the superglue doesn’t hold well on smooth metal surfaces. For those surfaces you will either need to rough up the surface or use a two-part epoxy.

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Weld-on in either liquid or goop form should work. They can be hard to use because they’ll mar any acrylic surface they touch, so application takes practice.

For acrylic to metal, E6000 should work. I have only used it for that once, but it held.

https://smile.amazon.com/E6000-220011-High-Viscosity-Adhesive/dp/B0044SB3M8

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Apologies for the belated reply, but I’ve just wrapped up a small bit of testing on gluing metal (in my case copper) to acrylic. I used #14 copper wire and PG clear acrylic, with the acrylic receiving a lasered hole of the same nominal size as the wire (ie., larger by the kerf).

  1. heating the copper with a butane torch, then stabbing it into the acrylic did not work reliably. Perhaps with a proper tip on a soldering iron (for continuous heating during the operation) it might, but otherwise not worth pursuing.

  2. Loctite GO2 glue works, although it can take a while to set up and is thick enough to leave a small fillet at the joint.

  3. Fiberfix UV-accelerated glue works very well. It also leaves a fillet at the joint (about the same as the GO2), but the UV activation is extremely handy when working with transparent acrylic (not surprisingly!)

  4. regular cheapo CA works fine, with the usual problems in handling CA glue. It left a small fillet at the joint, perhaps around half as much as the GO2 or UV glues.

  5. Starbond EM2 works fine, and leaves no fillet at all.

For my purposes, I’m going with the UV glue except when zero fillet is desirable, in which case EM2. None of the glues have (so far) caused any crazing or other damage to the acrylic, but I’m keeping my test pieces for longer-term observation so I guess we’ll see…

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