Gluing Plastic To Foam

[Brian R]

Hello All – I am trying to build a more structured hip belt utilizing foam padding and a plastic sheet.

Currently having trouble with adhesives.

For reference, I am using a lasting folders from Walmart and grey foam  that was pusrchased from quest outfitters.

To throw a bit of a wrench in this, I don’t have access to carpet glue which is commonly recommended for this purpose. I am in Mexico where there is very little carpet.

Any ideas?

[Mike B]

Double sided tape maybe?

[David Gardner]

E6000 glue

[Brian R]

RE Double Stick Tape – Possibly, though my expectation of adherence to the foam is pretty low.

 

[Brian R]

RE: E6000 – I see their website pretty much claims bonding to everything.

Gorrila Glue is down here in MX, and I may try that if I can’t find E6000

 

Thanks David and Mike for your thoughts

 

[Marcus]

Permanent spray adhesive from 3M or Loctite has held things together very well for me. Their permanent series is very permanent in my experience.

 

G-Flex epoxy is another good catch all, but may be too stiff for a belt

[Brian R]

Thanks Marcus – Will look for those at the hardware store here as well.

[Michael B]

3M77 works well on the EVA I made my belt out of. Prep the surfaces well, and use according to the instructions on the can.

[Craig B]

I’d be interested to hear how your experiments work out.  I did the same thing for the pack I made (and posted about here previously):

I put two different foams on a shell of HDPE.  The white foam had an adhesive on it already and I used transfer tape to stick the gray to the white.  I also tried the transfer tape directly to the plastic shell.  I was not super satisfied with either combination, and in the case of the belt in the picture, ended up sewing part of the lower and vertical edges near the back because the adhesive was not handling the shear forces of the belt when weighted.

This problem is on my list of things to revisit if I work on this design any more in the future….

[Dave @ Oware]

Contact cement

Barge Cement is one such.

[Brian R]

The limited adhesives availability to me in MX haven’t done too well.

A polyurethane glue I tried adhered OK to plastic and one of the types of foam, but poorly to the other type of foam.  Besides that, it move so much under the pressure of the weights I had on it – this issue could be solved via more significant oversizing of the pieces, and stabilizing….but the adhesion is a difficult problem to overcome.

All purpose epoxy didn’t adhere well to either of the foams.

For anyone trying in the future, I’d recommend scoring the plastic.  I.E. using some rough sandpaper (40 or 60 grit).  That will help with the plastic.

[Author]

Posts