Article published: The Cure

We have an article published in FAST magazine, out today.

Entitled Getting Stuck on Adhesives, we answer frequently asked questions about the curing of adhesives used in structural bonding.

Ask us for a copy; or ask for a subscription to the magazine!

Clear, fast plastic bonder... including acrylic!

Araldite 2028 adhesive is a fast setting, transparent, two-part polyurethane adhesive. What makes this adhesive different is that it is both transparent and UV stable, as well as flexible and fast curing.

Araldite 2028 bonds wide varieties of plastics including polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and polycarbonate (PC). Tailor made for seismic cables and cable assemblies, as well as general industrial applications.

Araldite 2028 will find many applications in bonding acrylic sheets and parts; it is clear and quick to cure, so our customers making point-of-sale (POS) displays and signs/signage will find it invaluable.

PC016 Soldering Kit conforms to J-STD-001D specifications

The Practical Components PC016 Mixed Technology Kit is an effective and economical way to train and evaluate students and employees. This kit contains a variety of standard surface mount and through-hole components with tracks to simulate real world situations. Each kit comes individually boxed with all components bagged and labeled for easy identification. It conforms to the IPC J-STD-001D standard for soldering, world-recognised as the sole industry-consensus standard covering soldering materials and processes.

Both tin-lead and lead-free kits are available. The PCB016 board is 3" x 4", .062" thick. IS-410 board material. HASL and immersion silver finish is available.

Video - mixing and degassing LED phosphors

We just added a video to our page about the THINKY Mixing and Vacuum Degassing Machines. It demonstrates the successful mixing and dispersion of LED phosphors into a silicone resin with absolutely no air bubbles.

Get tough - making electronics rugged

We are getting tough with electronic components that need to be made more rugged – to be more resistant to shock, vibration and rough handling. This “toughening-up” process involves edge bonding or underfill of components with the recently introduced DYMAX 9422-SC or DYMAX 9-20790 room temperature, fast, light cure adhesives.

In particular the DYMAX 9422-SC is a component reinforcement and staking material engineered to hold critical components, such as Ball Grid Arrays (BGA) and Video Graphic Arrays (VGA), for secondary processes or for long-term reliability. These light-curable adhesives dispense and cure in seconds to provide the optimal balance of production efficiency and technical performance. This will be of interest to anyone confronted with the need to ensure that critical components on printed circuit boards remain in place and with electrical integrity throughout the manufacturing, assembly qualification and service environment for the duration of a product lifecycle. Light curing adhesives dispense and cure in seconds to provide the optimal balance of production efficiency and technical performance with bead shape designed to wet both the board surface and the component edge without seeping into shadowed areas. This material is highly thixotropic for zero movement prior to cure - 9422-SC is halogen and silicone free and RoHS compliant.

The use of BGA edge bonding adhesives or underfills can eliminate leadless component interconnect cracking due to CTE mismatches. Typical applications include mobile phones, PDAs, laptop computers, gaming consoles, GPS computers and digital music players.

DYMAX 9422-SC features See-Cure technology (going from blue when uncured to colourless when cured) and features fast dispense and cure, easy re-work, simple visual inspection and covering in seconds with improved bond strength for die and pry testing.

Merry Christmas!

Thank you for working with us in 2009. We wish you a Delightful Christmas, and a Peaceful and Prosperous New Year.

We no longer send out printed Christmas cards. Instead, this year we have donated to the Sobell House Hospice Charity, who provide palliative care and support to residents of Oxfordshire (and their families) who are affected by life-limiting terminal illnesses. The hospice currently costs over £3 million a year to run, much of which is raised through the support and generosity of individuals and companies throughout our community.

We are exhibiting in the south

We are exhibiting at the Southern Manufacturing & Electronics Exhibition in Farnborough on February 10-11, 2010. Our stand number is 118. Please come and see us!

Chat with us!

We have introduced a new way for you to contact us - chat.

You will see this button on some of the major pages around our website. Just click on the button to open a chat window, where one of our sales team can answer your queries - online and immediately.

This button is used on all of our major product pages.

We will be manning the chat feature from 9:00am to 5:30pm GMT during business days.

Give it a try!

Light weight, low density epoxy potting compound is RF transparent

In some applications the weight of potting electronics to protect mechanically or environmentally can be a very significant part of the overall weight of installed equipment – sometimes this can be a problem. We have come up with some very advanced light-weight epoxy potting technology which brings the density right down to 0.6. IRS 2012 Light Weight Low Density Epoxy Potting Compound is an exciting development for weight critical applications, e.g. in aerospace or autosport, and is potentially of great significance for mainstream automotive systems and even railway systems where it is increasingly recognized that weight saving leads to fuel savings and a reduced carbon footprint.

IRS 2012 is not only very light on account of its advanced fillers, but is also very RF transmissive and is effectively transparent to radio signals, with excellent electrical properties, low cure shrinkage, good chemical resistance and good mechanical properties – highly suitable in fact for potting of aerials and related equipment.

The black two-part IRS 2012 is available in twin pack sachets which may be mixed and transferred to a syringe for precision application if required.

Conformal coating webinar

Sales partners DYMAX recently hosted a webinar called Conformal Coating at the Speed of Light: UV Conformal Coating from Start to Finish. The webinar focuses on cost savings of UV and how to qualify and maintain an effective UV conformal coating process. UV conformal coatings cure in seconds to allow for maximum process speed while consuming minimal energy and labor. As environmental regulations strengthen, budgets get tighter, and smaller circuits are positioned in harsher operating conditions, the technology is becoming increasingly accepted as a means to ensure performance throughout product lifecycle. UV conformal coatings have been successfully deployed in the consumer, military, and appliance markets for over 20 years. Various UV conformal coatings are designed to meet common MIL, IPC, and UL specifications allowing for widespread adoption. RoHS compliant, halogen-free, and solvent-free grades are available.

Register to download the webinar from DYMAX’s website at www.dymax.com/conformal. The question and answer portion of the webinar is also available for reviewing.

Sea lion studies with Araldite 2012

Very little is known about the diving behaviour of young sea lions who flourish on the Galapagos islands - which is where Araldite® 2012 comes in. Araldite 2012 was found to be the best adhesive to attach recorders and study repeated dives of sea lions down to 350–500 metres. The adhesive has to withstand the heavy impact of 100kg sea lions rolling, scratching, hitting rocks - not to mention the salt water of the Pacific ocean and the strong sun radiation.

A cooperation between the Galapagos Sea Lion Project, University of Bielefeld, Germany, the National Park Service of Galapagos and the Charles Darwin Research Station, Galapagos, is conducting the project and selected Araldite 2012 to attach time-depth-recorder (TDRs) to the sea lions to ensure that the recorders remained fixed whatever the conditions.

Preliminary results from the ongoing project showed that juvenile Galapagos sea lions dive up to a maximum of 350m, and adult sea lion females up to a maximum of 502m, which is an amazing record and makes the Galapagos sea lion the deepest diving sea lion species. And all of this new insight into sea lions has been made possible because the researchers were able to monitor what was happening with the use of Araldite 2012 and the recorders.

Jana Jeglinski, from the Galapogus Sea Lion project, said:

Araldite 2012 provided reliable deployment and retrieval of our dive recorders. Araldite 2012 ensured that our recorders did not fall off, whatever the depths and conditions, until we wanted to retrieve them which gave us the most wonderful data.

Araldite® 2012 is part of the Araldite® 2000 plus range. It is a fast cure, multi-purpose epoxy adhesive with extremely high toughness, combined with chemical and water/ humidity resistance making it an excellent choice for the sea lion project. Its novel use demanded the maximum performance in very unusual circumstances. It can be used in a wide variety of industrial applications where there is exposure to chemicals and water.

The success of Araldite 2012 in fixing the recorders to the sea lions provides answers about the natural history of the animals, including details such as where they dive and what they feed on which provides valuable implications for the management and conservation of the species.

Five new Araldite structural adhesives launched

We are in the process of bringing into our range five new Araldite structural adhesives, which join the Araldite 2000 Plus line of products. Download the latest Selector Guide to get an introduction to the new adhesives and their capabilities. Maybe you have a bonding application which we can solve?

Latest selector guide for medical device adhesives

Recently, we updated our website with an enhanced version of the comprehensive DYMAX Selector Guide on MD® Adhesives for Medical Device Assembly. This valuable tool contains a number of charts intended to help R&D engineers and product designers choose the appropriate adhesive for their application. All DYMAX MD® Adhesives are biocompatibility tested in accordance with ISO 10993 and/or USP Class VI.

Pages are devoted to specific adhesives for the assembly of catheters and guidewires, injection needles and syringes and respiratory devices. Recently developed products incorporating new technologies such as See-Cure and Ultra-Red fluorescing have been integrated into the guide together with charts, photos and technical information which are presented to simplify and shorten the adhesive selection process and to explain the new technologies.

For the designer with a new or unique disposable-device application, the multi-purpose bonding charts quickly show the range of products available, their technical data, and the various substrates to which they adhere. Most products shown bond well to a number of plastic substrates (including those which are more specialist to the medical field), as well as to dissimilar substrates such as metal, glass and ceramic. While most formulations cure instantly upon exposure to UV/visible light, the line of MEDI-CURE® 222 Series Cyanoacrylates is offered for bonding opaque substrates and for applications where aggressive adhesion to rubber is needed.

On the last page of the guide is a selection of curing and related equipment built to optimize both performance and cost savings. Our Application Engineers can help you match the resin to the appropriate equipment as an aid to simplifying assembly process development and validation.

New image for dispensing leaders

Congratulations to sales partner Fisnar Inc. Not only have they moved to new premises, but have undergone a bit of an image change. Here is their new logo - we like it.

Ultra-Red Adhesives for high contrast bond-line inspection and product verification

We are persuading our customers to “see red” literally. The Ultra-Red™ fluorescing technology built into many DYMAX adhesives offers assemblers concrete advantages in plastics fabrication.

Many plastics naturally fluoresce blue under UV light – this minimizes the inspection advantages of using blue-fluorescing adhesives in parts assembly. Ultra-Red™ fluorescing adhesives remain naturally clear until exposed to UV light, at which point they fluoresce bright red providing a vivid contrast that permits accurate bond-line inspection. The red fluorescence does not absorb the same light energy wavelengths as those used to cure the adhesive, resulting in faster and deeper cures when compared with the same adhesives containing blue fluorescence.

Ultra-Red™ fluorescing technology can also be used by manufacturers for product authentication. By virtue of its patented technology, the red-fluorescing compound is exclusive to DYMAX for use in radiation-cured adhesives and coatings. When measured, this technology produces a distinctly unique energy peak that cannot be reproduced by any other fluorescing compound. This offers manufacturers the ability to assemble or mark their products and be assured that, in the event of a future challenge as to the authenticity of the product’s origins, the products can be positively identified. Ultra-Red™ fluorescing technology is RoHS compliant.

Clear encapsulation ideal for LEDs

Opti-tec 4200 is an encapsulant/potting compound and adhesive. This optically clear polyurethane is ideal for use in electronics or electrical equipment which incorporates LEDs or other items where high transparency and aesthetics are important. Its clear, non-yellowing, hard setting properties will be appreciated in outdoor signage, illumination projects, e.g. pathways, swimming pools or fountains and in large public installations. It can be used for protecting photovoltaic and solar panel projects.

Opti-tec 4200 features excellent non-yellowing colour stability, due to the incorporation of both UV resistant base materials and the addition of UV stabilizers and antioxidants. It may be used for a range of applications from high value LED panels to decorative giftware (e.g. flower impregnation). It is also an excellent resin for the doming of badges, labels and decals.

Further important features include its hard set which enables it to resist impacts and mechanical loads better than silicones. It is also easy to mix, with very low viscosity, excellent penetration/air release, low shrinkage and low exothermic properties. Opti-tec 4200 is available in a convenient side-by-side double syringe cartridges, twin pack sachets and bulk packaging.

Difficult to mix pharmaceuticals and cosmetics?

Our Thinky mixers can give a proven solution to some of the most difficult mixing problems found in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. They will non-invasively mix materials from low viscosity to semi-solid or dry particle with in-situ vacuum degassing.

In the field of pharmaceuticals, Thinky mixers are useful for reagent research and development, the production of suspensions, and for the creation of high-performance materials such as hyaluronic acid. They are also used for the rapid compounding and production of ointments in a mere 30 seconds. Ointments, ointment and powder, cream base materials, gel materials and other compounds can all be compounded within the ointment jar eliminating clearing up processes.

In the manufacturing of cosmetic products, such as foundations, multiple pigments often need to be blended. The amount processed at one time using conventional methods normally had to be 1 kg or more for the mixing to be practical. In addition, the propeller mixers used conventionally took a long time and were unable to create simple cosmetic samples. By contrast, Thinky mixers are very effective for cosmetic colour adjustment and sample-making. The processing amount can be as small as 5 grams, which makes it possible to produce multiple samples with different compound ratios in a very short period of time. The finished products themselves are uniform in consistency and provide a smooth feel and colour for the skin.

Typically Thinky technology is suitable for foundation, lipstick, mascara, skin lotion, whiting cream, lip cream, hand cream, sunscreen cream, antiperspirant, soap, body soap, hand soap, shaving foam, aftershave lotion, shampoo, conditioner, hair spray, hair restorer, hair colour, facial cleansing foam, make-up remover, cleansing oil, cleansing pads, bath salts, air freshener, perfume, fragrance and detergent... amongst others!

A dummy on the small size - 01005 caps and resistors

The 01005 (or metric 0402) measures just 0.1" x 0.05", half the width and half the length of the previous smallest component, the 0201. The placement of 01005s presents challenges in nearly every aspect of the assembly process.
Can you pick up, center and place accurately and reliably? With Practical Dummy 01005 resistors and caps you can refine your process while saving money.

Do you need other sizes? We have them. 0201, 0402, 0503, 0805, 1206, and 1210s. Surface mount electrolytic caps in 3, 4, 5, 6.3, 8 and 10mm. Tantalum Caps, Melf resistors, we've got it all. Have a look at our comprehensive catalogue of Dummy Electronic Components and Mechanical Samples.

FIP Gaskets - Cheaper than you think?

We have just added Technical Bulletin TB2009-14 to our articles page about using benchtop robotics to lay down liquid Form-in-Place gaskets.

Optically clear silicone encapsulants

LED, photovoltaic (PV) and other light sensitive devices require UV stable, non-yellowing encapsulants for protection and improved light transmission. The table below shows a range of addition cure silicones which are temperature and moisture resistant, non-yellowing and UV stable.

Product	Hardness	Viscosity mPas	RI	Mix Ratio
OPT7020	40	4500	1.40	10:1
ACC Q-Sil 218	59	3000	1.40	10:1
ACC Q-Sil 222	59	2200	1.40	10:1
ACC QLE1102	45	1000	1.40	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 300	Gel	1000	1.40	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 301	Gel	2000	1.40	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 310	Gel	1000	1.40	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 311	Gel	1000	1.40	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 900	Gel		1.43	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 910	Gel		1.47	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 920	Gel		1.49	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 92-14-1	Gel	650	1.515	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 92-16-1	Gel	2820	1.539	1:1
ACC Q-Gel 92-18-1	Gel	5690	1.549	1:1

Of special note is ACC Q-Sil 222 which is self bonding to a wide range of substrates without the use of a primer.

These materials are technically well suited to the following applications

• LED potting


• Outdoor signage, displays and lighting


• PV module manufacture


• PV concentrator cell manufacture


• Sealing aviation displays

Check out our range of silicones from ACC and Opti-tec.