Today, we're taking a look
at a less common type of glue, one that cures
with exposure to light. [Music] There are a lot of types
of glue in the world, and I think that over the years,
I've used quite a few of them. But today, we're going to be
trying out some experiments with a type of glue
I've actually never used before. And that is glue
that cures with UV light. At its core, this UV glue
is a type of super glue. It's a cyanoacrylate, which means it's going
to be a clear liquid that bonds very strong. It's going to be really good
for some applications, and not so good
for some other ones, and we want to learn
what a few of those are. And maybe talk about some of the interesting things you
can do with this type of glue that you can't do
so well with others. UV curing adhesives
were introduced in the 1960s, and have since then become
a lot more affordable and easy to get your hands on. And so, it's something that you can definitely use
in hobby pursuits today. You don't have to be
some big fancy shop with crazy equipment. In fact, you can actually pick up some versions of it
at the hardware store. I got these at Home Depot. This is sort of an all-in-one
kit that has glue and a light built into it. And then, I've also got
these separate larger bottles, and this separate, perhaps overpowered
ultraviolet light. Here's the basic idea. We've got some UV curing glue, some standard superglue,
a five minute epoxy, and a glue gun. We're going to compare
them together, and see what's best at what. For our first test, I have just a sheet
of scrap cardboard, and we're going to start putting
the glue down on the cardboard, and see what it does. How long does it take
to cure with the light? How long does it take to cure
without the light? And how does it change
with more or less light? I'm gonna do a test
that's not necessarily recommended by the
glue manufacturers. Well, it has a warning on it that says it bonds
to skin instantly. So I'm actually just gonna take
a little bit of this, put it in my thumb and finger,
and then stick them together. With normal cyanoacrylate glue,
normal super glue, that's going to make them stick
pretty much immediately. So, let's try this. Oh, yeah, look at that. I've just glued
my fingers together. However, that little glue... Ooh, that is
a pretty good stick. There we go. If that does happen to you, a little bit of acetone
is the best way to break through that bond. It goes pretty quick. Okay, I'm going to do a test. It's been sitting there for about 2 minutes
without curing, now, we're going to hit it
with UV light, and see what happens to it. [Music] That was about five seconds. Ooh, now, it's sort of a tacky
gummy sort of consistency. So it has started to cure. [Music] Now, that seems
completely cured. It seems very rigid. Yeah, it has no give to it. It's very hard. All told though,
that's what 15 seconds. That's not a very
quick cure time. Let's compare that
to our UV beast flashlight. I'm gonna start
with two seconds. One, two. See how we're doing. That's cured. That is a hard plastic,
and it's very warm too. When super glue cures,
it does put off heat, and when we force it to activate
by shining the UV light on it, it puts off more
heat all at once. Enough that this feels
warm to the touch. Just it's cooling down by now, but right when I did it,
it was pretty warm to the touch. Let's try a bigger blob of it. I'm kind of curious
if we can actually get like a visible reaction
from all of the heat. That's a good-sized blob
of super glue. That could glue your fingers
together just about forever. Try our big flashlight. Here it goes. [Music] There's smoke coming
off of that. [Music] I assume that means it is
in fact getting quite hot. [Music] Ow. Yeah. That is getting very hot. Hot enough that just
by touching it, I burned my finger a little bit. Now, it's still
a little bit gummy. This first one that I did really
cured into a hard plastic, whereas this thicker puddle
has some give to it, and that makes me think
that maybe the UV light doesn't penetrate
through the glue very well. So the top might be cured, but underneath the top
maybe isn't quite yet. So the UV light cures the glue, and it puts off quite a bit
of heat when you do. We do have one more black light
that I want to test, and that's the black light that comes with
this FiberFix kit. This whole system,
it's got a glue bottle built-in. It's got a backlight built-in, and I want to see
how well it works. I also actually went ahead, and tore one of these open
to see how much glue is inside, and here's the bottle. It does say on it
that it's five grams, or 0.176 ounces. This bottle is seven ounces. So several times the amount of glue that comes
in the FiberFix kit. This little bottle is worth
about four of these. So let's test out
the light on this one. This is the glue
that comes with the kit. We're going to see how long it takes to cure with
the light that it comes with. This is about
the same consistency. Maybe just very
slightly thicker. [Music] All the way there. Okay, now, it's
beginning to set up. All right, that
definitely took longer. It was more like
the first light we tested, even visually, I don't know. This is obviously
much smaller output, but it seems like
about the same color. Whereas this UV beast light, it really does look
like a different shade. They pretty much all just
look blue on camera. The UV Beast light, the one I'm swirling
around right now, in real life, it's a bit
more of a pale purple. Whereas the other two
looked like sort of an intense bluish purple. There are a few things
that make UV cured glue very useful compared
to regular super glue. Now, I love regular super glue, and I use it
for plenty of stuff. But the best thing about it is
that you can choose when it gets cured,
when it gets activated. So you can put
some glue on something, hold it in place,
and hit it with the light, and it's just going
to freeze in place, and that's pretty valuable. One of the other things
I want to try with it though is I want to see
if I can sort of build up, or even sculpt with this stuff. Not going for anything fancy. But because I can make it cure
when I want it too, I'm going to try and just build
like a tiny little box out of it, attached
to this cardboard here. [Music] Just testing the
one layer I did. That's nice and cured. As a little test, we've got these UV
protective glasses, and we have a second pair, and we're actually going
to try and put those in front of the camera lens, and see if that lets us see the backlight
a little bit better. It does have a tendency
to overwhelm the camera when it's shining
really brightly, but hopefully, like this, we'll be able to see
what's happening more. With and without,
quite a big difference actually. [Music] So that is really cool
how much I can build up, just putting glue
on top of glue, and hitting it with the light
in between each layer. I want to do a strength test. Got some bamboo skewers,
and four types of glue. I've got UV cure glue. I've got regular super glue, and baking soda I
can add into it. I've got some five minute epoxy,
and I've got a hot glue gun. I'm just going to glue some skewers together
with each of those, and we can see which one
is going to hold up the best. Okay, three of these probably
have already completely set. The hot glue is
probably cooled down. The two super glues that we
cured with the baking soda and the UV light
are almost certainly cured. But the epoxy is not. It's five minute epoxy. We're going to leave
that probably at least 10 minutes to really make sure
it's set pretty well. It won't be at 100% full cure, which doesn't take
place for an hour. But I think we're going to get
a pretty good approximation of how it works. I'm now going to take a whole bottle of this glue
poured into this cup, and hit it with the light. I'm curious how much heat, what catalytic reaction
we're going to get out of that. It may only be 0.7 ounces,
but for super glue, that's quite a lot. Just very slight
yellow tint to it when we have that much of it. [Music] 3, 2, 1. [Music] Plenty of fumes
coming off of that. It's actually kind
of interesting. The top layer is cured,
but it's like gummy flexible. It's also very
much changed color. Before it was
slightly yellow tinted, and now it's gone a little bit
more green or blue. I'm gonna try and give it
some more light from the sides. [Music] Not sure how UV transparent
these cups are or are not. Seems that the UV
glue is actually not completely UV transparent. Once it cures, it doesn't really let light
through all the way. I mean, it's not just on the very top layer
that it's cured, but it hasn't cleared all
the way through either. Also, this cup
looks sweet like this. Let's test our bamboo skewers. How hard is it
to pull these apart? First off, we've got the skewers
held together with hot glue. [Music] That's a surprisingly good hold. I rarely think
of hot glue as something that's going to really
hold on in a pinch, but pulling laterally against
the direction of the glue, that's holding on pretty nicely. I'm going to see what happens
if I try and twist. [Music] Well, yeah, that's more
like what I was expecting. It just sort of tore
right through the glue. There's still glue
on both sticks, but it just tore apart when I twist it
just a little bit. Okay, here is our super glue
with baking soda. [Music] Yep, that's holding
pretty well that way too. That is hard
as I can hold on to it. Try the twisting. [Music] Maybe a little bit stronger
than the hot glue. Still shattered when I got
a little bit of twist on it. And again, they're still
glue on both sticks. It didn't release from one side. It just the glue
itself gave out. Okay, here's our epoxy,
or two part epoxy. I'm gonna try and pull us apart. Oh, well that just pulled apart. Now, it is possible I didn't give this quite
enough time to cure. It is still just
a little bit gummy. I don't know. That didn't feel
very stable though. Here is our UV cured super glue. I was able to pull
that one apart too. That does not look
like it was bonded very well. Is it the strongest glue? It's not looking like it. But for convenience and some applications,
it might be just what you need. I want to find some other cool things we
can try out with this stuff. I really like how it works. If you've got any suggestions
of things you want to see is do with the UV curing glue, let us know because I want
to try those things too. Guys, that's not all. We've always got more
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