Question:
We are a small manufacturer of Arts and Crafts items that we sell as kits to consumers via mail order, specialty retailers, and more recently, the Internet. One of the kits we want to offer makes use of the little plastic containers that photographic film comes in. However, we can’t get anything to stick to them. We need to be able to have our customers glue two of these little canisters together side by side, but everything we try to use just falls off. When examining what actually fails, we see that the adhesive literally falls off the plastic, leaving no residue at all. Any suggestions?
Answer:
Unfortunately, you’ve chosen a very difficult material to use an adhesive on. Film canisters used for 35MM film these days are molded from a polyolefin material. This type of plastic is economical, molds well and most certainly offers a suitable barrier to contaminants for the film itself, but presents a real challenge if you want to stick anything to it.