RE: Epoxy for transducer mounting

Rye Gewalt (ryeg@vais.net)
Fri, 27 Nov 1998 05:50:55 -0500


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
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JJ of Fozzguppy wrote.... I put a Humminbird fish finder in
my boat back in August, and love it.......it sure enough had
come loose (the epoxy seems to not have bonded to the bottom
of the transducer).

JJ:
Sometimes plastic things like your transducer have some
residual "mold release" on them that makes getting a good
adhesive bond difficult. In this case it sounds like the
epoxy bonded OK to the hull, but didn't bond to the
transducer. So the epoxy is probably OK.

I suggest that you try cleaning the transducer with solvent
or soap and water before trying again. Test the solvent on
an unused area of the transducer first to make sure it
doesn't eat away the plastic. Acetone comes to mind, but
it's pretty agressive stuff.

Some plastics -- like automobile dashboards -- have the mold
release built into the plastic and nothing sticks to them
very well. Thats why adhesive velcro falls off the
dashboard after a while --- 3M tells me that the mold
release "sweats" out of the plastic on hot days and corrupts
the bond.

If the transducer is made with Polypropolene (sp?) which is
kind of waxy stuff, I doubt that anything will stick to
it....except maybe bubble gum.

Good Luck
Rye

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JJ of Fozzguppy wrote....  I put a Humminbird fish finder in my boat back in August, and love it.......it sure enough had come loose (the epoxy seems to not have bonded to the bottom of the transducer).

JJ:
Sometimes plastic things like your transducer have some residual "mold release" on them that makes getting a good adhesive bond difficult.  In this case it sounds like the epoxy bonded OK to the hull, but didn't bond to the transducer.  So the epoxy is probably OK.

I suggest that you try cleaning the transducer with solvent or soap and water before trying again.  Test the solvent on an unused area of the transducer first to make sure it doesn't eat away the plastic.  Acetone comes to mind, but it's pretty agressive stuff.

Some plastics -- like automobile dashboards -- have the mold release built into the plastic and nothing sticks to them very well.  Thats why adhesive velcro falls off the dashboard after a while --- 3M tells me that the mold release "sweats" out of the plastic on hot days and corrupts the bond.

If the transducer is made with Polypropolene (sp?) which is kind of waxy stuff, I doubt that anything will stick to it....except maybe bubble gum.

Good Luck
Rye --------------297A5444F6B885EA3A6B035D--