Epoxy+hardener+microwave oven = epoxy foam!!!

General Discussion
1

I guess I missed the order of the steps.

Today I was ready to fix some delammed areas of my homemade EPS/epoxy longboard.

Mixed some cc of SP106 epoxy resin and some cc of SP106 slow hardener and while I was removing the stick I rememberd about the microwave technique for thinning the resin.

5seconds into my microwave oven and the mixture was amazingly thin, but while I was going from the kitchen to the workshop it started to boil and made a lot of fumes. Mixture started to foam itself (I guess th fumes trapped in the mixture) and in 2 minutes it was fully kick and hard as a rock.

I’m sure I did a mistake warming both resin and hardener. Didn’t I??

But maybe it’s the beginning of a new filler: the “epoxy foam”.

2

Its best to heat the resin without the hardener in it (I guess you could also try heating the resin in one cup and the hardener in the other)

3

yep, been there , done THAT!—got the mess in the microwave to clean up :wink: 2 sec without hardener works pretty good for me and then work in direst sun to warm the board also…Such a Mess i made!

4

That’s a 3.5 out of a possible 5

5

It’s called exotherm…another 10 seconds or so and it would have been called a bomb.The microwave was the detenator.And then…someone would have been picking up chunks of what was left of your body and bagging it.

I don’t think you’ll do that again.

Nuke it before you put the hardener in it.

6

I heat epoxy all the time in the microwave. I’ve had what you describe a few times. It’s happened both mixing the hardener before and after nuking. I think it comes down to warm is good - hot is bad.

7

Anyone with any EOD experience will tell you that:

Enough catalyzed resin(epoxy, shutter the thought of poly)+ compression+heat=BOOM!!!nuff said.