How to choose your Hysol cartridge tip. Long, short or none?
I am getting a lot of questions from customers about cartridge tips. "Should I use one?" "isn't it better to mix the glue all by myself?"
I have been using Hysol glue for many year in professional/ aerospace applications and the answer is simple: I am using long, short and no tips!
Here is how I use a tip for my application.
1. If I have to glue large surfaces together or blocks, I use no tips and mix the glue directly on a post-it block. When I have finished the job, I peel off the used sheet and the block is ready for the next mix!
This technique is fast and saves glue as there is no unused mix left as in using a tip.
2. If I need to dispense the glue precisely in a spot or if I need to make a long thin glue line like along a former, I use a short tip. The short tips we use are making a perfect mix and the result is excellent. They waste less glue than the long tips and are easier to clean.
http://www.ultimate-jets.net/collections/glues/products/hysol-short-square-tips
3. If I need to dispense glue in a far location, then I use long tips. In that case I am ready to sacrifice some material for accessibility.
In practice for all the epoxy gluing job I use no tips in 30% of the cases, short tips in 60% of the cases and long tips in the remaining 10 %
http://www.ultimate-jets.net/collections/glues/products/hysol-short-square-tips
The tips we sell are the green square types. After having used all types, I found these ones the most suitable for us. They are easy to clean and can be re-used many times if you wish to. Here is how to clean them.
Immediately after having used a tip, remove the green mixing insert from the body by pulling it gently with a pair of thin nose pliers.
Dip the green insert into acetone and brush it with an old firm toothbrush. Remove the glue mix from all 4 faces of the insert
Clean the empty body with cotton ear buds in the same acetone bath. Use the ear bud as a piston in the body.
You might need to change the acetone bath and re-clean both the insert and body to ensure that no remains of glue+acetone are left in the corners.
When everything is clean, let dry overnight before re-assembling the tip. This step is very important or you might end up with a locked insert...
I have been able to re-use tips about 10 times with this technique.
Some people might tell you that short tips do not mix glue properly. I have been using the tips we sell for over 10 years and never got any improperly mixed product. I believe that inconsistent results come from cheap Chinese mixing tips and guns, or from the Hysol 9462 air bubbles problems described in our Bulletin 1 as seen in the download section of this page:
http://www.ultimate-jets.net/collections/glues/products/hysol-9462
We have come across a number of non branded mixing tips coming from China that were improperly manufactured, with wrong grid pattern or large grid clearance creating product slippage outside of the mixing grid. This almost systematically resulted in improper glue mixing and poor gluing results.
Additionally we discovered that cheap Chinese glue guns were a lot more flexible than the genuine Loctite guns and allowed the pistons to push asymmetrically in the glue gun. This would also result in an improperly mixed product.
We strongly advise our customers to use genuine products to avoid safety hazard induced by improperly mixed Hysol glue.
