West Systems Epoxy Questions

E

edp

Correction - West Systems Epoxy, not System 3:

Hi all fiberglass & plastic guru's - I took Shine's advice & bought some system 3 epoxy to do various repairs on the air grabber parts I have for my satellite project. I went ahead & tried using it on some smaller stuff like the console door, the back of the door has some attachment standoffs that were there (broken off over time) so I played with the epoxy & made new ones by putting a straw over the remaining nub of plastic then poured the epoxy in, cured, drilled it & it works great.

What i noticed when doing that was how thin the epoxy is, whats a good filler agent that could go into the mix prior to pouring that will act like fiberglass mat in a large or deep crack where one may want more strength?

I did try cutting up tiny bits of FG to use but its pretty messy, any ideas?

Thanks,
Evan
 
West has a number of fillers to thicken the epoxy. Check out their website.
Microballons is a generic name for one type of filler.
 
I'm going to try some of the fillers West has, they dont provide a great deal of info though on them.

Thanks, Evan

PS - can a title in a post be edited? it doesn't seem to allow that under the edit feature??
 
I, like Shine, chop up mat. My favorite way is to take woven mat and, with a pair of sharp scissors, cut it on a 45 degree diagonal and you can get very short 3/16" strands that can be added to the resin to thicken it up.

John L
 
do you guys think the chopped mat is better than the West fillers? I bought a can of the 403 microfiber filler West sells - pretty reasonable, about $5 for the can - have wither of you used this stuff?
 
I have not used any of the fillers and can not advise on them. I would suspect they would work well though. I was not aware the filler was readily available back when I chopped the mat.

John L
 
different fillers do different things. for a gp filler i use fumed silica aka arosil. works just fine. i can buy milled fiber glass which is fiber glass powder. strong but hard to sand. short chopped strand as well. wood dust works well also. i would imagine west system would have a breakdown of all the filler types showing strength compared to sandability, etc. microballoons for example make a very weak filler but sands extremely easy.
 
Hi Jim, you'd think they'd have detailed info regarding their fillers but apparently they dont want people to know too many specific's. The info list just gives generalized data, I wondered about wood dust & fiberglass dust...

here's Wests chart if anyones interested.

http://www.westsystem.com/ss/filler-selection-guide/

thats about as much detail as you can get
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top