Regular plastic cement like Testors or Plastruct stuff only works on styrene-styrene bonds. Obviously you already know this since you are asking this question. I think it depends what you are gluing. CA glue is fine for small detail parts, like grab irons and such to styrene. However, CA glue has poor shear strength. If you need to glue metal and plastic in a load-bearing environment, a 2-part epoxy might be necessary. My usual CA glue is Gorilla. They have a few different bottles and sizes; the 'precision applicator' bottle bottle with the squeeze sides is fun. Jet is another brand with different viscosities. The thin one is good for resin kits. The capillary action pulls it into corners for assembling car sides. JB Weld is epoxy in a dual-syringe. It is at most hardware stores, so it's easy to find if you just want to try it out. You may not need it, I find CA glue is good for the kind of work I do. Loctite is another brand with many different kinds of adhesives.
John, might be a good idea to also provide what you’re trying to glue to styrene, and for what purpose. If it’s for a building on your layout that will not be moving or be handled at all, then that will make a difference as to what could be suggested. I am a fan of multiple variants of GORILLA GLUE. I use their wood glue for assembling literally all parts of the laser kits I am building. However, you might try their original formula Gorilla Glue, but in clear. I use this stuff around the house for multiple and varied repairs, from anything to porcelain, plastics, etc.
I am attempting to create a custom bridge using a Rokuhan R070 110 mm long single track deck girder bridge and using styrene parts for the support. I’m looking to glue the styrene bridge supports to this Rokuhan bridge. The Rokuhan bridge appears to be some sort of soft plastic. John
John, here are two other glues you might try. The PLASTRUCT is good stuff. I also have one of the Rokuhan bridges as you can see in the picture. And judging by the material, I do not believe you will have any problems getting styrene to adhere to it if you were using either of these glues in the picture below. Obviously you want to run a small test patch somewhere on the bottom side of the bridge to see how these glues react.
For plastic I use a 1 gallon can of Methyl Ethyl Ketone that I put into a small jar and apply with a brush. Life time supply.
I ran a test gluing parts of the Rokuhan bridge to a piece of styrene - one glued with JB Weld epoxy and one glued with Plastruct Plastic Weld. The Plastruct Plastic Weld definitely held up stronger and better than the JB Weld epoxy. I couldn't pull apart the Plastruct Plastic Weld glued parts no matter how hard I tried. Thanks for the input guys. I'll be using the Plastruct Plastic Weld to construct this bridge.
Hi, John. If you are talking about gluing sheets of cork to sheets of styrene, or styrene to foam I use a water-based contact cement used in the mobile home industry for repairing roofing. I don't know the name of it (I was gifted a mason jar of it) but it has the consistency of mayo. The good think about this contact cement is it can be moved once the two sides have made contact, unlike other contact cements. It takes a bit longer to dry but once it does it is invincible. Jim
