Epoxy is a great way to harden and bond materials. It’s commonly used in construction, as well as for DIY projects. Since epoxy is considered “waterproof,” you may assume that it can withstand high temperatures. This isn’t always the case, though—epoxy does have its limits when it comes to heat exposure.
Whether you’re using the resin on a DIY project or working with professionals on an industrial scale, you’ll need to know how much heat your epoxy can handle without degrading quality or causing other problems.
Does heat ruin epoxy?
Thermoset is a polymer that can’t be melted and reformed, whereas thermoplastic can. Epoxy resin is a thermoset polymer, which means you should never heat it.
Table of Contents
What temperature is too hot for epoxy?
To determine if the temperature of your epoxy is too high, you need to first measure the temperature of both the epoxy and its environment.
Typically this will be done using an infrared thermometer. An infrared thermometer measures the thermal radiation emitted by objects to determine their temperature without touching them.
Infrared thermometers are great for checking liquid mercury levels in thermostats or measuring food temperatures when cooking in a kitchen.
You can also use a regular digital kitchen timer as a makeshift infrared thermometer by placing it inside your container of epoxy, then turning it on until it reaches maximum heat (usually around 8 seconds).
The LCD screen should display an accurate reading of how hot your product is at this point (mine was 115 °F). Now that we know how hot our product is getting, we can turn our attention toward determining how much heat is being transferred into our environment as well.
Can you overheat epoxy?
Epoxy is a strong and versatile substance, but there are some things that can go wrong with it if you heat it too much.
Epoxy can be used to glue wood together or seal a hole in a pipe, but it also has many other uses such as coating objects or making them waterproof.
It’s even possible to use epoxy as filler for cracks in concrete or on boats! If you overheat epoxy, however, the chemical composition changes and your bond may not hold together as you want it to.
In this case, we recommend using contact cement instead of regular Elmer’s glue stick when gluing two pieces together at once (which would be an equivalent situation).
What do I do if my resin gets too hot?
If you’ve got a boatload of epoxy and a scorched base, don’t panic. First off, don’t try to repair the damage. It’s not going to work (and it could potentially make things worse).
Instead, just toss out the resin container and whatever you used it on. Then use some common sense: if it was hot enough to melt an epoxy container, it was probably too hot for you to be working with in the first place!
Is epoxy flammable when dry?
Epoxy resin is not flammable when it’s dry. In fact, it’s not combustible, explosive, or a fire hazard. Epoxy is made from epoxide groups and carbon-hydrogen bonds, which are the same things that makeup plastic.
If you heat epoxy resin enough to make it melt or boil off into gas form, you can still use the remaining solid part of your project safely as long as you don’t apply any heat to it afterward.
Can epoxy countertops handle heat?
Epoxy countertops can withstand a lot of heat. They are as durable as concrete and resistant to cracking, chipping, peeling, or other damage caused by heat.
This makes epoxy an ideal material for use in high-heat areas like kitchens. The surface is nonporous and will not absorb liquids or chemicals so you do not need to worry about staining your kitchen countertops when cooking with hot pots or pans.
Does resin melt with heat?
No, it won’t melt in the way that most of us think of melting. Resin is a thermosetting plastic—that is, it’s made to be heated and then cooled so that its molecules bond together in a chemically stable structure.
If you look at an epoxy molecule under an electron microscope, you’ll see all sorts of branching chains.
These branches are what make up its solid-state; when you mix two resins together and then heat them up (for example, with a hot glue gun), the branches lock together into what looks like honeycomb structures.
This process is called cross-linking or curing and can take hours or days depending on how much time your bonds have to grow before they’re hardened by heat or pressure from gravity (or both).
You’ll know your project has cured when it no longer moves around easily when handled; this means that all those little branchy things have reached a maximum density and are completely locked down by chemical bonds!
Does temperature affect resin?
Temperature does affect epoxy’s performance. The curing process is affected by heat, and this can influence the chemistry of your resin, hardener, and catalyst.
When epoxy cures, it produces heat that causes all three components to change their chemical structure.
The higher the temperature you’re working in, the more energy is released as heat during this curing process—and that means there’s more energy available to disrupt or change the chemical makeup of your materials.
So if you’re working in an area with extreme temperatures (like baking in your oven), the ingredients may react differently than they would at room temperature or lower temperatures.
Conclusion
We hope that this article helped you understand what happens if epoxy gets too hot, and how to prevent it from happening again.
