In need of Acrylic Glue or laminating advise.

[jon stevenson]

Hoping for a modern solution as I see this haven’t been discussed in a while. So I am cutting Acrylic letters for my own outdoor yard sign. My letters are approximately 5” tall and 2 layers thick. The Top layer is Black acrylic and fluorescent acrylic for the back layer. To laminate them together I have tried Lexel,thin,medium and thick Pma glue and I am just not happy with any of them, I want them optically clear as possible. The clearest is Lexel but even then I can’t remove all of the air bubbles, and the glue imo looks bad on the edges of the letters. Is there a solution?

[Mike Null]

Jon
Pictures are invaluable. A $6 per year contribution will permit you to post pictures and certain files.

In the meantime, I generally use solvent cement for acrylic but that is very difficult, if not impossible on large areas. Working with two colors complicates matters.

Humidity is a major bugaboo when gluing acrylic.

[jon stevenson]

I called the cement I’m using pma, I believe the correct term for the 3 viscosities I have used is Cyanoacrylate.

[Mike Null]

That would be super glue. I use a solvent for acrylic which contains methylene chloride. It's available from Johnson Plastic and other plastics supply houses.

Below is a small trophy where I used solvent cement.

[Doug Fisher]

I use something similar for acrylic, WeldOn 16, but it is almost impossible to get perfectly clear adhesion with see-through acrylic. Doesn't 3M make an adhesive in sheet/roll form that works well in terms of clearness? I believe I read about this in another thread here. You might want to research the threads here.

[Mike Null]

I've heard of that and reports were good but I haven't tried it. There is also a cement for bonding glass that will also work but requires UV activation.

[Kev Williams]

Best stuff I've found for a good, optical clear bond with glass & plastic is this stuff:
414773
-those 2 pieces of clear plex in my hands are glued together with it. I use it to glue glass awards together. It's about the consistency of 90w gear lube, which is great for no bubbles. Smells similar to clear silicone, and when totally cured it's pliable, not brittle. Takes awhile to set, it's not instant... The bond is very strong, but if need be, with effort you can break the bond, but emphasis on 'effort' ;)

Lowes has it, I assume HD has it.

[jon stevenson]

Great ideas thanks everyone, I have some Weldon 4 on the way as that’s what my closet plastic shop suggested and had in stock. I will also look for that Loctite and try that as well.
It almost seems silly now but as you can tell I am new to dealing with plastics, before I started my laser cutting 2 months ago I watch days worth of videos and read for days on forums , where I got my gluing advise was a video sponsored by my laser manufacturer, and I errored and took it as gospel and have been fighting to get a clean adhesion ever since. To be fair it did work but I’m the type where ok is not good enough. This advise should put the train back on the tracks.