Cement for Vinyl-to-Styrene Bonding?


IronBeltKen

IronBeltKen

Lazy Daydreamer
Does anybody know of an adhesive solvent that can bind vinyl to styrene?

I have this Kibri crane where the track chains don't lay flat like prototype ones do - the stiff vinyl-like material that they are made of is circular, and they tend to stay that way even when installed on the chassis:

TracChainCloseUp.jpg


As you can see, this makes the model appear hopelessly toylike; rather than bulging up, the top half should be sagging, which is what heavy steel tracks would do. I have tried Plastruct Plasticweld(r) which has always enabled me to glue styrene and ABS plastic pieces together, but it just slides off the vinyl treads. Surely there must be some type of material that would 'melt' vinyl enough to bond it?
 
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It's not a solvent, but I recently discovered "Gorilla" super-glue gel, with the green cap. Don't know how long it has been around, but I've always been a fan of their regular super-glue (blue cap), and this gel product is, well, super. I get mine at Home Depot, but I have seen it advertised at WalMart also. As an alternative, you might try soaking them in hot water until soft, and then weighting down the centers with small cans before installing.

Willie
 
Err, KEN, I wouldn't try to warm/soak them as it may cause them to shrivel, or worse - shrink. What you need is a tube of the old fashion "GOO" from Walthers. I have different materials that were "gooed" together over 40 years ago - and they are still stuck. I have not tried the product that Willie mentioned.

I was just going to comment on what a beautiful dragline that is - except for the tracks! The barges look great too!
They are just too pristine looking to be in that type of service. Need clutter/tools and some "droppings" on the deck too!
 
One other idea might be, depending on the thickness of the track, is to "score" each grove between the plates which may allow the track to be more pliable? - which would help in gluing it in place.

I would place my money on the GOO, but it would require weighting down, or being tied down where you want the sag to be - and being placed aside for a few days/weeks for the GOO to set up hard.
 
Willie and Sherrell, thanks for the feedback. I'll go ahead and order the Goo, but it'll take a few days to get here - which means I won't have the thing done in time for Friday's op session **sigh**. I'm also replacing the dragline bucket with a clamshell bucket that I had in my scrapbox, since I've only seen dragline buckets used in quarrying/strip mining applications - never in harbor dredging.
 
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