PRO-SET^® Adhesives

The standard adhesives provide high-strength bonds with a range of cure times, whereas our toughened adhesives deliver exceptional toughness and superior peel strength for heavily loaded applications and difficult-to-bond substrates including pre-preg, sheet moulding compound, metals and most plastics.  The toughening additives help prevent crack propagation.

When we say something is tough, it is not the same as saying it is strong. Think of a plastic water bottle, you can crush it and twist it, so it is not necessarily described as strong. But you cannot tear it very easily, this is because it is tough. Toughened adhesives tend to provide greater peel strength

There are many different properties we can look at when we say strong; Tensile Strength – how well the epoxy bonds to itself, e.g the inherent strength within itself; Flexural Strength – at what point the epoxy fractures when bent; Compression strength – the force required to crush the epoxy; Tensile Elongation – how much the epoxy stretches before it breaks; Tensile Adhesion Strength – the stress required to fail a bond line. Then there are also different thermal properties that could determine how ‘Strong’ an epoxy is. The strongest epoxy depends on what aspect of strength you are focusing on.

Where toughened adhesives have toughening agents in the hardener, super toughened adhesives have them in both the resin and the hardener. While super toughened has extra toughened properties, in order to gain them, there can be a play of against other properties. One example of this is that Tg is often higher for a toughened product compared to a super toughened product. But the super toughened product has higher peel strength.