BIRD-DOGGIN'THE INTERNET

Bondage on the 'Net
Assistance with Adhesives

By Dr. Steve O'Neil, Micro Mo Electronics, Inc.

You might think adhesives are mundane because of their ubiquitous nature. But if you read about the exciting case of Four Pillars Enterprises earlier this year, you'd realize that adhesives are the stuff of thrillers. In this case, the thriller was a theft of (adhesives) trade secrets suit brought against the company by Avery Dennison Corp. For most of us, this is as tacky as it gets. Nevertheless, adhesives are vital for many sealing and joining operations in virtually every industrial environment. But for those of us who are not thrilled by van der Waals force analyses, it boils down to a simple question of what do we need in order to hold things together. In this respect, there are good starting resources to be found at the Adhesives & Sealants Council (ASC) at http://www.ascouncil.org. Here you can get the low-down (with links) on related trade association resources (such as the Adhesion Society, ASTM, packaging, labeling, and even roofing materials associations). The site also has a "news" section, a sparse and largely unrelated "trade publications" section that omits the industry standards, a technical section mostly chemically oriented, and a members only section for networking and member communications.

The Adhesives Manufacturers Association at http://www.adhesives.org also has some interesting features and links including a section of the Freedonia study on worldwide adhesives statistics for 1996-1998. It is divided by product groups, market segments, and regions. The site gives you excerpts from the Association's "Trends" newsletter as well as a limited number of (mostly government and packaging) links. The Association of European Adhesives Manufacturers at http://www.feica.com, on the other hand, takes a different approach. Their site includes not only a conference, a standards list (but no standards!), and industry links, but also a nice synopsis of what changes have been made to the site and when they were made. For the uninitiated, even the Encyclopedia Britannica at http://www.britannica.com has search capabilities that will deliver you select Web sites, definitions, books available (including standards) on adhesives, and the like. One of the many VerticalNet portals on the Web is now in the adhesives business with an informative site at http://www.adhesivesandsealants.com. While the content is commercially focused, there are some interesting news items pertinent to the trade. Based on my own experience with this "portal" builder, however, I would not recommend signing up for the free newsletter unless you are prepared to be bombarded with every newsletter in the engineering world that is pushed through their many other portals.

Loctite's well laid-out commercial adhesives website.

Another neat tool I encountered in my travels was the "Adhesive Selector Guide" at http://www.assemblymag.com/toolbox/adhesive. Enter the types of material that you want to bond together, and then select the criteria that best match your application, and the selector will find appropriate adhesives for your application. I haven't put it to the test, but it appears to have been the result of considerable development efforts. There is also a toolbox for temperature conversion and other functions in the works. Adhesive & Sealants Industry magazine also has a promise site, but at this point, it seems to cater primarily to the marketing folks. For engineering tips, you can link to the "Forums" section from http://www.adhesivesmag.com/. Here are some good discussion threads on technical applications of adhesives. It seems reasonably well focused, but suffers from a lack of clearly threaded subject organization and many outdated posts. A corollary, of course, is that participation breeds content. Their "Association Netlinks" covers the industry organizations well and also includes clickable links to the associations' own Web pages.

Among the commercial sites, there are those ranging from good to positively awful. One of the better laid out sites is that of Loctite at http://www.loctite.com/.While the site is easy to use and contains useful applications of the company's products, especially in the Adhesive Sourcebook, the content is entirely company-oriented and there are no generic tutorials or outside links. The English-based institute TWI at http://www.twi.co.uk offers a large amount of information on adhesives to its individual and corporate members. It is an engineering consultancy, training, and certification center specializing in joining science and technology. Materials for training are available for sale. With a staff of over 400, there are many knowledgeable adhesives and welding experts on staff. The Composites and Adhesives Group at the University of Bristol, UK, is also a good source for those with seemingly insolvable problems. Located at http://www.fen.bris.ac.uk/mech/emrc/com pad.html#Whatweoffer, they offer consulting and research expertise in the fields of polymer matrix composites and structural adhesives.

Dr. Steve O'Neil

Contributing editor Steve O'Neil is president of the Small Motors and MotionAssociation (SMMA) and vice president advanced research and planning of Micro Mo Electronics Inc., Clearwater, FL. He can be reached on the Internet at steveo@micromo.com

URL Alert! We recognize the URLs printed in these articles may change by the time you try them out on the Internet. Most of the past Bird-Doggin' articles we've printed, with updated URLs and links, can be found at http://www.micromo.com/related.html