Lamination and Bonding of Thick Foams/Sponges

Silicone foam and sponges offer incredible properties that are useful across many industries. In industry, it may be a challenge to procure thicker silicone foams and sponge materials. The challenge is because not many products are offered above .500″ in thickness. This leads to problems if the application requires a thicker gasket. There are a few strategies employed to achieve higher thicknesses in sponge or foam materials:

Lamination

Oftentimes, NEDC uses acrylic PSAs from 3M — which NEDC is a converter of — that allow for a bit tighter control of the total height of the stack-up. This is because other methods require more input to achieve more thickness. The acrylic PSA can vary depending on the application, but many acrylic PSAs do work well.

Bonding

One of the strategies that NEDC commonly uses is to bond silicone foams or sponges together with RTVs or glues. Most often, NEDC utilizes silicone RTV-3145 from Dow Corning or others. This allows NEDC to adequately bond them together with a similar material to what is being bonded together. This can be challenging to bond larger sizes together exceeding certain sheet sizes.

Standard Products that are Thick

It helps if the sponge or foam is thick to begin with. A common silicone foam product that exceeds ½” in thickness are:

• Silicone Foam BF-1000 from Rogers Corporation — offered up to 1″ in thickness.

These strategies can allow for stack-ups exceeding 1″, and maxing out around 3–4″. They allow for a large number of configurations to be waterjet-cut. Typically exceeding 1″, NEDC waterjet cuts gaskets. For more information on bonding your silicone foam or sponge together, please contact sales@nedc.com.