Special
Producers of hybrid adhesives
HYBRID SOLUTIONS ARE TIMELESS IMPROVING ONE ADHESIVE WITH INGREDIENTS FROM ANOTHER
Photo – Soudal
We’ve come a long way from the days of glueing floors with pitch or loam to today’s silane adhesives. All that is because floor coverings make a lot of diverse demands, and wood not in the least. Various factors help us to decide which adhesive is most suitable for glueing this or that wooden floor. The number of forms of adhesive technology is the story of ‘the wood and the trees’. To make user choice easier, some standards try to classify adhesives into properties rather than the underlying technology. Hybrid adhesives lead us gradually to more or less universal solutions.
Choosing an adhesive, but on what basis? Various factors help us to decide which adhesive is the most suitable for glueing this or that wooden floor. For instance, you need to consider the type and flatness of the substrate. The properties and dimensions of the floor covering also affect the stability. Then there’s the type of floor. With some types of floor we want to restrict the wood’s natural movement completely, whilst with other types of floor we want to tolerate it to some extent. The number of forms of adhesive technology has increased enormously over the years. It’s the story of ‘the wood and the trees’. The standard EN 14293 provides a simplified choice between flexible and sturdy adhesives. The main property by means of which sturdy and flexible adhesives stand out from each other is
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the elasticity. The elasticity of a material designates the extent to which a material exerts a counterforce (the so called resilience) when the elastic is distorted (i.e. not permanently) or the extent to which a material is distorted when external pressure is applied. With hybrid adhesives we find ourselves (for the time being) mainly in the field of flexible adhesives.
Choosing an adhesive, but from what? Just as the correct extinguishing agent is crucial for putting out a fire, so, too, is the use of the correct adhesive of paramount importance for glueing parquet properly. The ‘correctness’ of the choice of adhesive is determined partly by the type of parquet, the type of substrate, weather conditions, and structural circumstances. Floor fitters have all they need since for all circumstances and combinations of circumstances the chemical industry supplies an adhesive which is more or less suitable. The range is extensive: dispersion adhesives, mono or dual-component adhesives, polymer adhesives, etc. The ingredients, too, are extensive: acrylate, polyurethane, silane, epoxy, and such like. Wide as that range is, researchers nevertheless continue to work on the development of new adhesives. Floor fitters had only just adapted to the breakthrough of MS polymers and other silane adhesives when the technological world came out with the term ‘hybrid’; so far, so good. Parquet floor fitters can live with that, too.
