Patching Artfully Acrylic Sump: What Type of Solvent?

Kengar · Oct 14, 2018

I have a sump that was made by Artfully Acrylic. I need to patch a bulkhead hole.

Weld-On 3 and Weld-On 4 are available from Amazon. Weld-On information page says that 3 and 4 will not bond to cross-linked acrylics. I have no idea whether AA uses cross-linked acrylics.

I do see this online:

What this essentially means, is that an additional chemical has been added to give these materials [cross-linked acrylics] greater resistance to harsh chemicals and staining agents. As a result, they resist the solvents that would normally dissolve and fuse regular acrylic sheets. To properly bond these types of materials, you will need to use adhesives, rather than solvents. These take longer than solvents to cure, so many fabricators rule them out right away because of the effect that curing times have on large volume production

.

The panels of the sump appear to be joined by solvent welding, so I suspect it's not cross-linked acrylic.

Has anyone here patched a sump (or other product) from Artfully Acrylic? Do you recall what you used? Was it with company input or just SWAG as to what to use? (I have message in to them but just checking here, too, in the interim.)

dbl · Oct 14, 2018

I would imagine it's likely made with a cast acrylic and Weld-On (SciGrip) #4 would be the best bet for the patching. If you end up with some air gaps, a bead of #16 could be used as well.

Just speculation on my part so you may want to wait to see if AA responds. @Floyd R Turbo, any ideas here?

cmcoker · Oct 14, 2018

If you are just wanting to plug the bulkhead.. I bought a 2nd hand sump, the bulkhead on the side had been plugged with a PVC plug. I never had any problems with it leaking. Maybe an option if you dont want to deal with actually patching the acrylic.
Best pic I have, you can see the plug in the bulkhead on the left.

Turbo's Aquatics · Oct 14, 2018

Cross-linked acrylic is not used in the aquarium building industry.

You can non-permanently seal a bulkhead hole by cutting a square of any acrylic or lexan even and using silicone to bond it in place. Pressure will hold it in place

Additional note: while silicone doesn’t bond to acrylic structurally, it will seal and hold in the instance, as long as the patch is on the inside

Kengar · Oct 14, 2018

cmcoker said:
If you are just wanting to plug the bulkhead.. I bought a 2nd hand sump, the bulkhead on the side had been plugged with a PVC plug.

Not actually a complete hole I want to patch over. Started a hole using an old tripod-type hole cutter, but the unit jumped around as soon as the hole saw "bit" into the plastic and ended up chewing up a lot of plastic. I stopped drilling before I ever went through the acrylic (not even the pilot hole from the pilot bit I forget to remove before starting went through), and made a cutting template out of 3/4" plywood to hold the hole saw instead. (Worked much better.) Just want to patch over it to make sure there's no risk of leakage/breakage due to weakened acrylic.