Gum Rubber
 

Does anyone have any tips on attaching gum rubber to aluminum? I was thinking about using either contact adhesive or epoxy. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Re: Gum Rubber
 

You want to talk to team 222. They are the gum rubber wheel specialists.

Re: Gum Rubber
 

Dave and his wheel o' signatures

:D

Re: Gum Rubber
 

Well, there are many ways to attach it. First is by the methods you stated before, second is to just purchase the material with adhesive on the back. If you are looking for neoprene, McMaster-Carr sells it with an adhesive backing already. So, you pull the wax paper off and apply it where you want it.

Re: Gum Rubber
 

yup we got gum rubber......one thing we thought about last season was how to attach the gum rubber to our wheels....well instead we bought thick sheets of gum rubber and cut a full size tire out. Then we used a split ring type wheel made from aluminum to capture the gum rubber. The design is kinda tough to explain here, but if you have more questions and AutoCAD feel free to PM me I have detailed drawings of how we made our wheels.

The reason we didn't just used gum rubber with adhesive or thin gum rubber wrapped around a rim and screwed to the rim was to handle the torque our machine put out last year.

Cliff
222 Alum.

Re: Gum Rubber
 

There is one drawback to this method though, the wheels weigh 8lbs each, or something close to that. We had dullies, so i am sure singles would weigh much less and a hole saw could help a lot. Good luck!

Re: Gum Rubber
 

Thanks for all your help, but i'm not making wheels, i'm attaching it to the end of a pneumatic cylinder. We made aluminum mounts that screw onto the end of the cylinders, and we need to attach gum rubber to the bottom of that mount.

Re: Gum Rubber
 

Epoxy would work but make sure thats where you want it....

Re: Gum Rubber
 

We had gum rubber on the end of our wings last year too. I would imagine yours would be a similar application as far as attaching goes. We cut the gum rubber out with a whole saw and there was a little hole in the middle because of thise. all we did from there was take our little gum rubber whole and a bolt with a flushable alan head on it and screwed it in tight enough so that you could only feel the gum rubber fom the surface. The bolt was indented into the gum rubber. Just watch how much pressure you put on the gum rubber. Ours popped off almost every match. We ended up using nylon slides instead because there was no need for grip in our application. PM Cliff if you would like to see a drawing he can find one i hope, or make one. Sorry Cliff i am not so proficient in CAD.