Debonding Superglue Threadlock

So I have a motor assembly such that everything is close to edges all the way around so you can't get a wrench or socket or anything onto the bolts. You can only fasten by hand. So I did that and then used some superglue as threadlocker. But, idiotically, I didn't check the motor alignment before I appled the superglue.

Because there is not enough room to get sockets or wrenches near the nut I can't unscrew it. I tried leveraging the nut to break on one of the screws but the protruding shank and nut broke off and the remanining bolt is still being held in by the superglue.

Debonders don't seem to work since they can't get at all the glue. Someone sugestd heating up the bolt with a torch to burn the superglue away or break it down or something...doesn't sound safe considering what superglue is made of.

Anyone know how? It is all metal surroundings, with unthreaded holes (only the nut is keeping the bolt in, there is no threads biting into the base material. It needs to uniformly destroy the superglue enough so I can unscrew the darn thing by hand.

Guessing:

Can you soak that end of the motor in acetone over night or for some time.

Maybe it has to work its way into the glue. And you might have to move it around, like a circuit board to take a layer off at a time??

Also, acetone might eat the coating from windings in the motor so I would not put the whole thing in it?

I would think you can heat superglue, just do not breathe it.

Just grind the nut away!
Cheers,
Grant

I removed two screws by drilling them in half which broke the super glue bond (and the screw), but the other screws are too deep to drill (or grind). I also tried drilling the screw away lengthwise but the steel is too hard and the screw just drifts over to the aluminum around it and drills at that.

I can't soak it because there are plain bearings with grease (and motor grease) present as well.

It may be time to send this one to motor heaven, and think about saving the children.

One thing I learned with a 1971 Chevy Nova (in the year 2003; yea right) as a kid.. I soaked the wheel bearings in gas/petrol to clean them. Then put new greese on them.. Ran it a year before the spindles locked up.. The vapor did mess up the new greese.

I go with PapBravo.. Save the kids. Buffet and Gates are. And (I can not spell her name) Angelina Joline. It is a multi-billion dollar bunsiness.

Can you tap (TAP as in hit) it out with an awl?

It's not one motor. It's 4 of them, about $500 worth of stuff at stake.

Tried smacking it with a hammer through a pin, no dice. Argh!

I think I have had to grind a socket down sometime in the past to make it a thin wall one. They had to get the bolts or nuts on in the first place so there must be some room, even if a standard tool will not fit.
Sorry, this is all I can contribute to solving your problem.

PS. A picture or two would be nice, it is really a little hard to visualize the problem fully.

The problem area is the screws holding the two closest plates together with nylon spacers in the middle.

The plate attached to the motor is the so called alignment plate while the opposite plate is welded to the housing. I need to remove the screws so that I can separate the motor + alignment plate from the housing. There are 4 screws. Two on top that you can see and two more screws beneath the visible ones. You can see how small it is and how you can't get a wrench in there. The 4 visible screws between the two plates without nylon spacers are the screws that hold the motor to the alignment plate. This image is to scale.

Brute force solutions:

shear/chisel the bolt - requires getting a nice sharp chisel...
drill another hole in the other side and do whatever you did to the first two bolts
wire saw and a lot of spare time?

Seriously, heat is probably the easiest way of dealing with it: From the official loctite manual: **broken link removed**

page 5: heat to 450F (i.e. 200C) for 5 minutes, remove while hot (ouch). Normal superglue should probably give faster. Plus, since the nut looks like it's zinc plated stuff, a soldering iron and a small gob of solder should make quick work of it.

Heat definitely works.

Another option is to use an impact driver to break it loose. You should be able to pick one up at almost any hardware store. An alternative to this would be a small air or battery powered impact wrench.

Next time use the blue locktite!

If I understand correctly, you are trying to remove the screws with the nylon spacers.
I also assume that the screws are mild steel or plated brass.
Try drilling through the nylon spacer into the screw, the spacer will give a small amount of guidance to the drill.
Start with a very small diameter drill, smaller than the screw. When you have drilled all the way through the screw with the small drill, use a larger one, the same diameter as the screw.

To get at the inaccessible screws, drill an access hole through the aluminium housing.

What are you using for a drilling machine? A hand held electric drill? Probably too clumsy.
Use a bench mounted pillar drill if you have access to one. Otherwise use a simple hand drill.

And the drills themselves, are they nice and sharp? not all worn out and rounded off.
Also I hope they are made of High Speed Steel (HSS), not cheap carbon steel, waste of time and money.

JimB

PS Once you have taken them apart, I think your motor mount needs a bit of a re-design!

The nylon spacers are just enclosing the screw to separate the two plates. Both are utterly expendable. I am using a drill press. It was a bit tricky with the two screws I removed because for one of them, the spacer was not superglued so it was free spinning with the drill. But I got those two. The main problem is just the back two.

I use my TiN bits because that's what I have lying around.

PS Once you have taken them apart, I think your motor mount needs a bit of a re-design!

Click to expand...

lol. Yeah! No kidding. Machining and welding is not really my thing so I bought that motor setup. It's easy and good IF you do the stuff in order. But once you aren't doing it in order (ie. there are screws the mount the motor housing BENEATH the motor. It can take hours to slide the screws under (while avoiding the magnet inside the motor throwing the screws off path) and hoping it angles just right to fall into the hole. You COULD just remove the motor and insert the mounting screws and reinstall the motor...but as you can see, my motor is superglued into the housing.

Let this be a lesson! Design your OWN designs if possible OR go through the ALL actions before putting something together and make sure you do it right the first time around and in the proper order. Also, make sure you have tool clearance in your design.

Oh, and never use superglue for threadlocker. I would have used nylon lock nuts...but I couldn't fit in a wrench to tighten them!

Acetone will work, or just use nail varnish remover.

You should not even be using Superglue. Actually I've tried to use Superglue as a threadlocker and it was lousy. I'm surprised it even held your project together that hard.

In the future use the removable Locktite for stuff like this. The non-removeable stuff is crazy effective if you never want it to come apart again too.

Beware, Loc-tite has thread sealers and lockers.

The odd thing, the Loc-tite RED is in a blue tube (got me on that one)?? I never would think super glue would work that well myself. For a robot it is OK, but the kids gokarts and motor bikes, I use loc-tite on them. Too much darn money in them kids to take a chance.

I have a hirobo helo (robo helicopter I have not used in months, but great for stress relief). I will try super glue on that..

Is it the motor plate you are having trouble getting out? If a straight shot from the top, maybe an EZ-OUT. Drill a hole in the tops, and then get an EZ-OUT set to remove them. harborfreight.com for a cheap one shot set.

On the topic of thread locker, buy the dispenser that looks like a lipstick tube, way more cost effective, way less messy. I get probably 5 times the mileage from one of those than the liquid squeeze bottle twice the volume.

One thing I have had some success with is a small diamond burr in a Dremmel type tool for things like this. Also, for wrenches, check out what are called "ignition" wrenches. They have one of the open end wrench head at 90 degrees to the handle. You will wonder how you ever got by without them once you have a set. They come in fractional and metric. I have a set of 5mm to 11mm, saved the day many times.

Another thing I have done with diamond disc and dremel. Slot the heads, but look at his photo... He is screwed (no pun)

Frick, now for some reason my solder iron won't ignite. Should a piezo-electric butane ignition still be able to light after it has dried (from being splashed with water).

How about.............

Now that I have seen the picture I was wondering why not jut cut down through the outside plate right through the nylon spacer and the bolt, at an angle as shallow as possible. The cut would probably not weaken the structure to any appreciable degree. Of cause you would have to make four cuts, one from each side.
--
Rolf

dknguyen said:

The problem area is the screws holding the two closest plates together with nylon spacers in the middle.

The plate attached to the motor is the so called alignment plate while the opposite plate is welded to the housing. I need to remove the screws so that I can separate the motor + alignment plate from the housing. There are 4 screws. Two on top that you can see and two more screws beneath the visible ones. You can see how small it is and how you can't get a wrench in there. The 4 visible screws between the two plates without nylon spacers are the screws that hold the motor to the alignment plate. This image is to scale.

Click to expand...