Today, we're taking a look at a less common type of glue,
one that cures with exposure to light.
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There are a lot of types of glue in the world,
and I think that over the years, I've used quite a few of them.
But today, we're going to be trying out some experiments
with a type of glue I've actually never used before.
And that is glue that cures with UV light.
At its core, this UV glue is a type of super glue.
It's a cyanoacrylate,
which means it's going to be a clear liquid
that bonds very strong.
It's going to be really good for some applications,
and not so good for some other ones,
and we want to learn what a few of those are.
And maybe talk about some
of the interesting things you can do with this type of glue
that you can't do so well with others.
UV curing adhesives were introduced in the 1960s,
and have since then become a lot more affordable
and easy to get your hands on.
And so, it's something
that you can definitely use in hobby pursuits today.
You don't have to be some big fancy shop
with crazy equipment.
In fact, you can actually pick
up some versions of it at the hardware store.
I got these at Home Depot.
This is sort of an all-in-one kit that has glue
and a light built into it.
And then, I've also got these separate larger bottles,
and this separate,
perhaps overpowered ultraviolet light.
Here's the basic idea.
We've got some UV curing glue,
some standard superglue, a five minute epoxy,
and a glue gun.
We're going to compare them together, and see
what's best at what.
For our first test,
I have just a sheet of scrap cardboard,
and we're going to start putting the glue down on the cardboard,
and see what it does.
How long does it take to cure with the light?
How long does it take to cure without the light?
And how does it change with more or less light?
I'm gonna do a test that's not necessarily
recommended by the glue manufacturers.
Well, it has a warning on it
that says it bonds to skin instantly.
So I'm actually just gonna take a little bit of this,
put it in my thumb and finger, and then stick them together.
With normal cyanoacrylate glue, normal super glue,
that's going to make them stick pretty much immediately.
So, let's try this.
Oh, yeah, look at that.
I've just glued my fingers together.
However, that little glue...
Ooh, that is a pretty good stick.
There we go.
If that does happen to you,
a little bit of acetone is the best way to break
through that bond.
It goes pretty quick.
Okay, I'm going to do a test.
It's been sitting there
for about 2 minutes without curing, now,
we're going to hit it with UV light,
and see what happens to it.
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That was about five seconds.
Ooh, now, it's sort of a tacky gummy sort of consistency.
So it has started to cure.
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Now, that seems completely cured.
It seems very rigid.
Yeah, it has no give to it.
It's very hard.
All told though, that's what 15 seconds.
That's not a very quick cure time.
Let's compare that to our UV beast flashlight.
I'm gonna start with two seconds.
One, two.
See how we're doing.
That's cured.
That is a hard plastic, and it's very warm too.
When super glue cures, it does put off heat,
and when we force it to activate by shining the UV light on it,
it puts off more heat all at once.
Enough that this feels warm to the touch.
Just it's cooling down by now,
but right when I did it, it was pretty warm to the touch.
Let's try a bigger blob of it.
I'm kind of curious if we can actually get
like a visible reaction from all of the heat.
That's a good-sized blob of super glue.
That could glue your fingers together just about forever.
Try our big flashlight.
Here it goes.
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There's smoke coming off of that.
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I assume that means it is in fact getting quite hot.
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Ow.
Yeah.
That is getting very hot.
Hot enough that just by touching it,
I burned my finger a little bit.
Now, it's still a little bit gummy.
This first one that I did really cured into a hard plastic,
whereas this thicker puddle has some give to it,
and that makes me think that maybe the UV light
doesn't penetrate through the glue very well.
So the top might be cured,
but underneath the top maybe isn't quite yet.
So the UV light cures the glue,
and it puts off quite a bit of heat when you do.
We do have one more black light that I want to test,
and that's the black light
that comes with this FiberFix kit.
This whole system, it's got a glue bottle built-in.
It's got a backlight built-in,
and I want to see how well it works.
I also actually went ahead,
and tore one of these open to see how much glue is inside,
and here's the bottle.
It does say on it that it's five grams,
or 0.176 ounces.
This bottle is seven ounces.
So several times the amount
of glue that comes in the FiberFix kit.
This little bottle is worth about four of these.
So let's test out the light on this one.
This is the glue that comes with the kit.
We're going to see
how long it takes to cure with the light that it comes with.
This is about the same consistency.
Maybe just very slightly thicker.
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All the way there.
Okay, now, it's beginning to set up.
All right, that definitely took longer.
It was more like the first light we tested,
even visually, I don't know.
This is obviously much smaller output,
but it seems like about the same color.
Whereas this UV beast light,
it really does look like a different shade.
They pretty much all just look blue on camera.
The UV Beast light,
the one I'm swirling around right now,
in real life, it's a bit more of a pale purple.
Whereas the other two looked like sort
of an intense bluish purple.
There are a few things that make UV cured glue
very useful compared to regular super glue.
Now, I love regular super glue,
and I use it for plenty of stuff.
But the best thing about it is that you can choose
when it gets cured, when it gets activated.
So you can put some glue on something,
hold it in place, and hit it with the light,
and it's just going to freeze in place,
and that's pretty valuable.
One of the other things I want to try with it
though is I want to see if I can sort of build up,
or even sculpt with this stuff.
Not going for anything fancy.
But because I can make it cure when I want it too,
I'm going to try and just build like a tiny little box
out of it, attached to this cardboard here.
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Just testing the one layer I did.
That's nice and cured.
As a little test,
we've got these UV protective glasses,
and we have a second pair,
and we're actually going to try and put those in front
of the camera lens,
and see if that lets
us see the backlight a little bit better.
It does have a tendency to overwhelm the camera
when it's shining really brightly,
but hopefully, like this,
we'll be able to see what's happening more.
With and without, quite a big difference actually.
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So that is really cool how much I can build up,
just putting glue on top of glue,
and hitting it with the light in between each layer.
I want to do a strength test.
Got some bamboo skewers, and four types of glue.
I've got UV cure glue.
I've got regular super glue,
and baking soda I can add into it.
I've got some five minute epoxy, and I've got a hot glue gun.
I'm just going to glue
some skewers together with each of those,
and we can see which one is going to hold up the best.
Okay, three of these probably have already completely set.
The hot glue is probably cooled down.
The two super glues that we cured with the baking soda
and the UV light are almost certainly cured.
But the epoxy is not.
It's five minute epoxy.
We're going to leave that probably at least
10 minutes to really make sure it's set pretty well.
It won't be at 100% full cure,
which doesn't take place for an hour.
But I think we're going to get a pretty good approximation
of how it works.
I'm now going to take
a whole bottle of this glue poured into this cup,
and hit it with the light.
I'm curious how much heat,
what catalytic reaction we're going to get out of that.
It may only be 0.7 ounces, but for super glue,
that's quite a lot.
Just very slight yellow tint to it
when we have that much of it.
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3, 2, 1.
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Plenty of fumes coming off of that.
It's actually kind of interesting.
The top layer is cured, but it's like gummy flexible.
It's also very much changed color.
Before it was slightly yellow tinted,
and now it's gone a little bit more green or blue.
I'm gonna try and give it some more light from the sides.
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Not sure how UV transparent these cups are or are not.
Seems that the UV glue is actually
not completely UV transparent.
Once it cures,
it doesn't really let light through all the way.
I mean, it's not just
on the very top layer that it's cured,
but it hasn't cleared all the way through either.
Also, this cup looks sweet like this.
Let's test our bamboo skewers.
How hard is it to pull these apart?
First off, we've got the skewers held together with hot glue.
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That's a surprisingly good hold.
I rarely think of hot glue as something
that's going to really hold on in a pinch,
but pulling laterally against the direction of the glue,
that's holding on pretty nicely.
I'm going to see what happens if I try and twist.
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Well, yeah, that's more like what I was expecting.
It just sort of tore right through the glue.
There's still glue on both sticks,
but it just tore apart
when I twist it just a little bit.
Okay, here is our super glue with baking soda.
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Yep, that's holding pretty well that way too.
That is hard as I can hold on to it.
Try the twisting.
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Maybe a little bit stronger than the hot glue.
Still shattered when I got a little bit of twist on it.
And again, they're still glue on both sticks.
It didn't release from one side.
It just the glue itself gave out.
Okay, here's our epoxy, or two part epoxy.
I'm gonna try and pull us apart.
Oh, well that just pulled apart.
Now, it is possible
I didn't give this quite enough time to cure.
It is still just a little bit gummy.
I don't know.
That didn't feel very stable though.
Here is our UV cured super glue.
I was able to pull that one apart too.
That does not look like it was bonded very well.
Is it the strongest glue?
It's not looking like it.
But for convenience
and some applications, it might be just what you need.
I want to find
some other cool things we can try out with this stuff.
I really like how it works.
If you've got any suggestions of things you want to see is do
with the UV curing glue,
let us know because I want to try those things too.
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