Superglue for food processor workbowl repair?

March 30, 2008 5:17 AM

What glue can I repair my food processor work bowl with? Can I use super glue?

I dropped my food processor work bowl and put a big crack through half of it. How do I repair it? Superglue would be the easiest, but I'd rather not have toxic chemicals leeching into my sauces. I'd need to use a thin liquid glue of some sort to get inside the crack.

Replacing the work bowl isn't a decent option, unfortunately. I'm in Austria, and bought a multifunction cheapie blender/food processor/mixer, and I might as well buy a whole new one if I need to replace it.

If you give glue brands, please give as much info on the chemicals as possible, as they won't have the same brands out here (also the labels will be in German, and my chemistry vocabulary isn't exactly great in German! :)

posted by sirion to home & garden (9 comments total)

Cured cyanoacrylate (superglue) is non-toxic, but it's also pretty fragile and very slightly water soluble, so probably wouldn't do a good job.

There are lots of food-safe epoxies, though. Any big hardware store ought to have some.

I'd also look into plastic "cements" that're actually just solvents that liquefy the plastic where you paint the solvent on; then you press the sticky plastic together and when the solvent evaporates the joint is made, often very strongly indeed. The cements are all hideously toxic, but the whole idea is that they evaporate away, so I think the result would probably be perfectly food-safe if you just leave it out in the sun for a few hours.

There are also "plastic welding" products, which work just like regular welding (heat source and rod of filler material) but with plastic, and of course at much lower temperatures than metal welding. They're still a bit exotic, though, and I think most of them aren't food-safe.
posted by dansdata at 6:17 AM on March 30

A couple of days ago a student was in our shop with a cracked water reservoir for his coffee maker. Our plastic solvent (SC-125, methylene chloride) didn't dissolve the polypropylene of the reservoir. We looked into finding a food-safe epoxy or silicone sealant, but eventually he decided to order a replacement from the manufacturer. One big concern was that with a sealant, you'd get a lot of little hard-to-clean nooks and cracks, perfect places for bacteria to accumulate.
posted by hydrophonic at 7:26 AM on March 30

Seconding the solvent idea. If the plastic can be melted by the solvent, the two pieces will pretty much fuse together. You can even smooth out the surface while you're doing it. However, I wouldn't use it for blending wet things anymore -- just use it for chopping and grinding and plan for a new food processor if you use it a lot for wet ingredients or batters.

However, the next time you break the thing, I would recommend going with Cuisanart (assuming that they have that brand and it is supported in Australia; if not, there must be some comparable product). The parts are very durable and it's always been easy to replace parts when they do break.
posted by Deathalicious at 7:32 AM on March 30

With a big ol' disclaimer about never having tried this myself, I'm 99% sure that food processor bowls are made of a plastic called polycarbonate and here's what I googled up for polycarbonate glues:

methylene chloride, an organic solvent (not really a glue, it softens the plastic so it gets sticky and will bond)

SC-325 some kind of glue

Weld-On 45 another kind of glue.

You'll have to research these to see if they're food safe, of course.
posted by Quietgal at 9:00 AM on March 30

Silicone based glue?
posted by watercarrier at 9:51 AM on March 30

Elmer's Stix-All is self leveling silicone, smooths itself, flows into cracks.
posted by hortense at 11:02 AM on March 30

Methylene chloride is a probable carcinogenic. Safer to buy a new food processor bowl, maybe.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:27 PM on March 30

Your standard consumer super-glue is often used for surgical purposes (though for surgeries on humans, any professional will be required to be using a super-glue that is certified sterile and sold for the purpose of surgery).

But basically, no worries about toxic leaching - you can use that stuff to fix yourself :-)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:43 PM on March 30

There is a site devoted to gluing stuff. http://www.thistothat.com/
posted by theora55 at 6:57 AM on March 31