4: Rubber and Plastic Bonding, Repair and Restoration

This chapter provides an overview of the categories and types of elastomeric, thermoset and thermoplastic polymers utilised in traditional industrial and engineering applications, as well emerging engineering prototype and component production. The applications for which the essential chemistry and technology of polymeric solutions, and the fitness-for-purpose testing methods considered, are: Rubber bonding, repair, rebuilding and resurfacing where natural or synthetic rubber engineering materials are fixed/sealed into place, and when they become damaged or worn; Plastic bonding and repair with conventional cold applied polymeric technologies for compounded plastics and reinforced plastic composites.