Author(s)

Matt Jackson¹, Benton Allen¹, Trent Kelly¹, Courtney Waddell¹, Emily M. Hunt^1*, Stephanie Steelman², Neil Koone²

¹West Texas A & M University, Canyon, Texas, USA.
²CNS Pantex, Amarillo, Texas, USA.

Use of epoxy as an adhesive is a common practice. The most common applications are permanent sealants. Epoxies have a wide range of operating temperatures, and are very resistance to adhesive failure. When a need to remove this adhesive arises, it is not always easily accomplished especially if the part has excessive adhesive. To maintain fidelity of the parts attached by epoxy, a project evaluating several methods of epoxy removal was conducted. Methods evaluated included low wavelength, near-ultraviolet radiation, solvent dissolution, and thermal cycling. The UV method failed to demonstrate a repeatable dissociation. The solvent study did result in dissociation of bonds, but introduced chemicals that could make subsequent chemical analysis of parts suspect. Thermal cycling showed a high repeatability for dissociation of bonds and may prove to be relatively inexpensive to implement.

Barco Bond, Bond Dissociation, Cyrogenic Cycling, Dialyll Phthlate, Epoxy Bond, Epoxy Degredation, Epoxy Dissociation, Thermal Cycling, PBX 9501, Plastic Bonded Explosive, Thermal Cycling

Jackson, M. , Allen, B. , Kelly, T. , Waddell, C. , Hunt, E. , Steelman, S. and Koone, N. (2015) Breaking the Adhesive Bond between Dialyll Phthlate, Barco Bond 185 and PBX 9501. Journal of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, 3, 196-201. doi: 10.4236/msce.2015.37026.