Structural Reactive Acrylic Adhesives for the Modern Age

Legislation to improve the environment people live in is becoming increasingly common in our modern age. Awareness of the hazards of living with chemicals has grown, and increased the need for safer alternatives to the products that have been used for years.

Reactive acrylic bonding based on Methyl Methacrylate is an industry standard product that has been used since the 1970’s; but Methyl Methacrylate is highly flammable, extremely smelly, narcotic, sensitising and a respiratory irritant. Yet the industry has found it difficult to move away from this monomer because the adhesives made from it are high in strength and very reactive.

Many alternatives lack the bond strength or reactivity of Methyl Methacrylate based products. Also adhesive stability can be an issue, reactive systems are complex mixtures and it is always a balance between effectiveness and stability.

Like other adhesives, the baby has often been thrown out with the bathwater, in the name of health and safety. Well, this is my personal opinion although I do understand current trends are leading towards a safer environment for all.

We are left with the dilemma “how to make things safer without compromising the products performance?” We at Structural Adhesives Limited are dedicated to improving our products in line with current thinking and customer safety is a major concern for our development team. We developed low odour, safer alternatives in the 1990’s products such as S-605/01A and S-608/88A, and we are continuing out research to the present day with new products coming onto the market in 2019.