Glue Warehouse Offers New Adhesive Formula For Granite, Quartz

After over a year of research and development, Glue Warehouse is now shipping a new Seam-it adhesive formula that cures faster and is designed to meet the challenges of bonding to granite and quartz surfaces.

Fabricators of solid surface, quartz and granite will benefit from the next generation of adhesive with faster cures and effective bonds in ready to use colors.

“One of the properties of stone that makes it such a challenge from an adhesive standpoint is its ability to conduct heat,” said Chad Thomas of Glue Warehouse. “When you place your hand on a stone or quartz slab it always feels cold, even if the ambient air is quite warm. The high thermal conductivity causes heat to be pulled from your hand and the slab feels colder than its surroundings.  This phenomenon is known as heat sink. The same thing happens to the adhesive in a seam or a lamination and since the adhesive needs a certain amount of heat energy to cure, it is important that it overcomes this property of stone when formulating an effective adhesive product.”

One way to do this is to use a hot activator and overpower the thermal conductivity of the stone — effectively pushing the cure through. While this can be effective, there are usually a couple of undesirable side effects.

First, using a hot activator produces higher cure temperatures and may discolor some of the lighter shades. Second, a lower overall bond strength is usually the end result. This is especially true in solid surfaces due to the unbalanced nature of the formulation.

“A better, although more difficult approach, is to formulate based on carefully measured polymeric chain chemistry, keeping the peak exothermic temperature within an acceptable range while reducing the overall cure time andmaintaining an effective bond strength,” Thomas explained. “The new Seam-it formulation takes full advantage of advances in polymeric chemistry to produce a faster, color stable adhesive-perfect for seaming and laminating stone.”