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Suggestions Adhesive for bonding Gator Foam to itself?

White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
Long story short, we made a few showroom display panels for a client last week....built to their specs.

Biggest panels were roughly 45" wide x 83", vinyl mounted to 1/2" thick gator foam. They spec'd a 32" wide wedge bracket/french cleat on the back, and spec'd that it be made out of the 1/2" gator foam.

We made the panels, stuck the brackets on with Mega Tape double sided, which seems to bond the gator foam to itself really well. I pulled and pulled and couldn't get any to budge.

Customer received panels yesterday, said they looked great. 3 hours later I get an email saying one of the brackets came off and now they're worried about all the other ones.

When they had originally sent me pictures of some of the existing brackets, it looked like someone slopped on some sort of glue all over the place to mount the bracket.

The area that is to be bonded to the board is only 1.5" x 32" so really not much coverage given the size of the panels. (pics attached) Using a thin double-sided tape was definitely an oversight, given the rigidity of each panel and the potential for warping.

Any thoughts on what would be a good product to glue these things back on? Something that will set up fairly quickly so we don't have to tie up the whole shop all day fixing these things?

Thanks for listening.
 

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White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
johnnysigns said:
Can't you cheat with some VHB/double sided tape + the liquid adhesive? Always seems to work for us - meaning the tape will hold the part in place while the primary adhesive cures.
Click to expand...
I just talked to our adhesive distributor, they recommended Xcel Instant Grab, or VHB. We've got a ton of 3M 4496 foam tape that we're going to experiment with here.
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
Could you throw some 3/4" wood screws in while the adhesive sets up?
White Haus said:
Using a thin double-sided tape was definitely an oversight, given the rigidity of each panel and the potential for warping.
Click to expand...
I'll say the adhesive thickness has nothing to do with it's strength. 3m 467MP is as thin as I've seen, and it is on par with 3m vhb tape (4915), and exceeds it's shear strength at temperatures above 22C.
 
White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
JBurton said:
Could you throw some 3/4" wood screws in while the adhesive sets up?

I'll say the adhesive thickness has nothing to do with it's strength. 3m 467MP is as thin as I've seen, and it is on par with 3m vhb tape (4915), and exceeds it's shear strength at temperatures above 22C.
Click to expand...
Yeah I don't know why I didn't think to use 467 in the first place, we've got a giant log of it. I'm going to test it out and see how it performs.

The plot thickens........after several phone calls with the customer yesterday it turns out they're not even using a french cleat on the wall - just a flat metal bar. So the cleat that we made is being pushed beyond what it should be, as it's not interlocking with a matching wedge. The panels (10) have mostly all fallen down now right when they're having important meetings.

One of these jobs I should have just turned down from the beginning. Rush job that came out of nowhere - had I had known they didn't have a cleat on the walls I would have questioned the whole thing and suggested something else.

Now I have to wait until their meetings are over and go over there and try to clean up this mess. Sigh.
 
Grizzly

Grizzly

It’s all about your print!
Gatorfoam has wood veneers which is why it seems to hold and then falls off a few hours later. You can actually use wood glue but like the others it takes 2 hours to cure which sucks. We like gatorfoam and how it prints and coats but for this specific type application we switched to ultraboard since it's a styrene surface and we have better success with two sided adhesive tape.
 
JBurton

JBurton

Signtologist
Grizzly said:
Gatorfoam has wood veneer
Click to expand...
That's what I was wondering, that is, a great bond on the surface is one thing, but how well is the surface bonded to the 'guts' of the substrate?
Though in this case it sounds like the job was doomed from the start.
White Haus said:
The plot thickens........after several phone calls with the customer yesterday it turns out they're not even using a french cleat on the wall - just a flat metal bar
Click to expand...
Are you sure they weren't using Z clips? It's a french cleat made from extruded aluminum, much shallower than 1/2". You may get away fixing it with the actual product as opposed to installing gatorfoam on the wall, install z clip on your signs.
www.easternmetal.com

EZ Clips - Signage Extrusions - Our Products - Eastern Metal Supply

EZ Clips - Signage Extrusions - Our Products - EMS offers nationwide supplier of quality aluminum components which include custom aluminum extrusions manufacturing as well as complete custom aluminum fabrication services. We are also renowned for customer satisfaction, Our Products - EMS offers...
www.easternmetal.com
 
White Haus

White Haus

Not a Newbie
JBurton said:
That's what I was wondering, that is, a great bond on the surface is one thing, but how well is the surface bonded to the 'guts' of the substrate?
Though in this case it sounds like the job was doomed from the start.

Are you sure they weren't using Z clips? It's a french cleat made from extruded aluminum, much shallower than 1/2". You may get away fixing it with the actual product as opposed to installing gatorfoam on the wall, install z clip on your signs.
www.easternmetal.com

EZ Clips - Signage Extrusions - Our Products - Eastern Metal Supply

EZ Clips - Signage Extrusions - Our Products - EMS offers nationwide supplier of quality aluminum components which include custom aluminum extrusions manufacturing as well as complete custom aluminum fabrication services. We are also renowned for customer satisfaction, Our Products - EMS offers...
www.easternmetal.com
Click to expand...

Definitely doomed from the start, and along every step of the way. (Same job caused our router to go kamikaze on the dust boot.............fried our shop vac............... etc etc etc)

I originally thought of using Z clips, and then they sent the very specific specs on what they needed.

The most frustrating part is that I know this whole method is wrong, but what they had before was done this way and the brackets held up.
 
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