Epoxy for metals

[John Terefenko]

Not quite sure where to put this question so I thought I would try here. I am looking to bond disimilar metals together such as aluminum to brass. I need a great strength epoxy. Any suggestions??? Also looking to glue aluminum to plastics so hopefully the same epoxy will work. Thanks for the replys.

[David DeCristoforo]

JB Weld should do the trick...

[Philip Johnson]

3m makes some structural adhesives there are also some aircraft structural adhesives, I can not think of the name of them right now and I am on vacation so I can not look at work.

[Drew Eckhardt]

Not quite sure where to put this question so I thought I would try here. I am looking to bond disimilar metals together such as aluminum to brass. I need a great strength epoxy. Any suggestions??? Also looking to glue aluminum to plastics so hopefully the same epoxy will work. Thanks for the replys.

System 3 T-88.

Epoxies will glue many but not all plastics. Exceptions include Teflon (PTFE), polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon, mylar, PVC, acrylic (plexiglass) and polycarbonate (lexan).

With small areas you may prefer a 5-minute epoxy adhesive though.

[Bill Leonard]

My suggestion is to use "golf club" epoxy. I don't know the name of the two part epoxy, but it is cheap and available through golf component stores.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Drew is spot on. Most polymers produce oils that gather on the surface. This prevents most adhesives from adhering. Oddly PSAs are unaffected by this.

You can flash the oils off with a torch and quick like a bunny get your glue on. In industrial apps this was usually done with an Electron Beam Rastering gun. This was pretty much the state of the industry back in the mid 1990s when I left the biz. Adhesive science has moved on well past those limitations.

Aluminum is an all together different pony. The oxide on the surface forms about as fast as you can strip it away. That's why painting aluminum has been a bugger. The Aluminum oxide moves and paint doesn't adhere well to moving substrates.
But as with plastics, Adhesive science has moved on.

[Matt Meiser]

That's why painting aluminum has been a bugger.

Hopefully they've got that one figured out too--the hood on my new truck is aluminum.

[David Keller NC]

Not quite sure where to put this question so I thought I would try here. I am looking to bond disimilar metals together such as aluminum to brass. I need a great strength epoxy. Any suggestions??? Also looking to glue aluminum to plastics so hopefully the same epoxy will work. Thanks for the replys.

My experience with this has not been too good. JB Weld will indeed bond brass and aluminum, but the bond is not very strong. Other than high-tech, industrial formulations (that might well be really expensive), another alternative I can think of is silver-solder brazing. This works exceptionally well on steel and brass, but I've not tried it with aluminum and brass.

What it takes to do it is thin-strip silver solder tape and a blowtorch. One cleans the surface of the two metals, clamps them together with the silver solder tape in between, and heats the brass side up to red hot. The solder melts and bonds the two surfaces very tightly.

[John Terefenko]

My experience with this has not been too good. JB Weld will indeed bond brass and aluminum, but the bond is not very strong. Other than high-tech, industrial formulations (that might well be really expensive), another alternative I can think of is silver-solder brazing. This works exceptionally well on steel and brass, but I've not tried it with aluminum and brass.

What it takes to do it is thin-strip silver solder tape and a blowtorch. One cleans the surface of the two metals, clamps them together with the silver solder tape in between, and heats the brass side up to red hot. The solder melts and bonds the two surfaces very tightly.


The thing is there will be no pulling on the piece but I do not want it to break apart if dropped on a concrete floor or other hard surface.

[Dick Strauss]

Most solders won't stick well to aluminum. Even when it is clean, normal solder just balls up on Al.

Is there any way to thread the two pieces together? Maybe you can drill holes in one and thread the other to accept a screw or two if they run in the same direction.

[John Terefenko]

No basically the brass will be an accent piece. It will be like segmenting but with metals.