Digital Adhesive Selection Guides

Interactive adhesive selection guides are another tool to help you find solutions.

An early step in selecting the right adhesive for any application is identifying specific products to use in tests, line trials, or prototypes. Just where, exactly, do you find the right products to test?

Can I just 'Google' it?

This approach might work for consumer-grade or DIY-market adhesive products, but tends to miss products that are not featured on supplier webpages or that are sold business-to-business. This method doesn’t facilitate a systematic search or allow side-by-side comparison of products.

Should I contact my supplier rep?

Sure! If you have thought out the requirements of your application your rep should be able to provide good recommendations. Otherwise, you might be in for a back-and-forth exchange that slows down your selection process or worse, the supplier recommendation is a poor match.

What about that print brochure the supplier left after their last visit?

Or, what about that catalogue PDF I found online? Great! These are a solid place to start because they are organized by application or adhesive type and include useful performance data, packaging information, and part numbers for ordering. Keep in mind these catalogues don’t always have the most current information because suppliers introduce new or sunset old products.

But… it can be time consuming to make sure you have the current brochure, or the brochure from the right business unit that supports your application, or that the brochure you found online is relevant to your location…

If only those print brochures were interactive...

You’re in luck! Enter the interactive or digital adhesive selection guide. Interactive adhesive selection guides are apps or search databases managed by the various adhesive manufacturers and large distributors. These guides or tools can simplify the task of lining up candidates for testing by allowing you to compare products side-by-side, being up-to-date, and allowing you to request more information or samples all in one place.

Before diving in, take a moment to think about what the adhesive needs to do in your process and while in service. A summary of factors to consider when selecting an adhesive can be found here. With these considerations in mind, you will have what you need to filter and refine your options when using an interactive adhesive selection guide.

How do digital selection guides compare?

A comparison of the features of major interactive selection guides for general purpose industrial adhesives appears below in Table 1. Guides from 3M, Bostik, H.B. Fuller, Henkel, Illinois Tool Works, and Parker LORD are included. Some suppliers, such as Sika, DuPont, Uniseal, and DELO , to name a few, are focused on specific markets and working with a supplier or distributor representative might be the best path to learn about products for evaluation.

The TL;DR is that guides from 3M, Henkel, and Parker LORD have more selection criteria and product information available to help you make a selection. Guides from other suppliers tended to steer you towards a product brochure or supplier representative. Read on for more discussion of the features of the interactive selection guides.

In general, there are two types of selector guides: 1) Prompt-driven, or 2) Filter-driven. The prompt-driven guides help you narrow down adhesive candidates by answering a series of questions and typically only show results once all questions have been answered. The filter-driven guides let you sort based on whatever filter criteria are important to your application and typically refresh the available options as you filter.

The selector guides allow you to sort options by responding or filtering based on market segment, application, brand or product family, and assembly type. Choices could sometimes be further refined by application parameters including substrates, form factor (e.g., 2-part vs 1-part), joint design, expected joint movement, expected dynamic loads, bond area, bond gap, assembly time, service temperature, applicable industry standards, and application method.

Material properties were sometimes offered as a selection criteria and sometimes offered as an output. Properties included cured color, hardness, viscosity, cure speed (such as open time, handling time), adhesive chemistry, strength, and chemical resistance.

The 3M and Henkel guides allow for an easy side-by-side comparison of products with key properties and features, while the others required opening multiple tabs, data sheets, or windows to compare products.

Fortunately, all of the guides provided links to product data sheets (PDS), technical data sheets (TDS), and safety data sheets (SDS). Reviewing the literature for products from multiple suppliers might be your next step in deciding what to evaluate and might be a manual process. Being able to download the literature while searching for options is helpful.

Sample requests pre-populated with product information were integrated into the selectors from 3M, Henkel, and Bostik, while the others provided information on how to obtain samples through different channels (e.g., distributors, sales reps, or technical service).

Conclusions

The interactive adhesive selection guides available from major adhesive manufacturers can be useful in selecting candidates for testing, prototyping, or line trials. Being able to sort and filter options is an improvement over thumbing through a brochure or catalogue. The criteria for sorting and filtering varied among the supplier’s tools with 3M, Henkel, and Parker LORD having the most selection criteria. This means that the products recommended by the interactive selection guide have a higher likelihood of being a good match for your application.

Keep in mind that the interactive guides will give recommendations based on the information you provide or filters you apply. Double-checking the technical data sheets for all products under consideration to confirm they are good options for your application is worth the effort. Finally, the best way to determine if a recommended product is right for your application is through testing.

If you have questions about how to choose the right adhesive or how to develop and execute your own test plan for your application, contact Digital Glissade to schedule a consultation.