Simple solution for removing dried hot glue

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By Goli Mohammadi
Posted 2010/10/28 @ 5:40 pm
Category Electronics

MAKE reader John Mangan (siliconghost) wrote in to share a nifty simple trick with us: you can remove dried hot glue with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs. He writes: “I literally stumbled on this while working with hot glue over 20 years ago at a previous job. It ended up being a ‘major discovery’ for how we conducted our ‘re-work’ on defective parts.” He made this video demonstration to share the knowledge. We also love how he has the cotton swap container attached to the alcohol bottle.

In the Maker Shed

9 Responses to Simple solution for removing dried hot glue

Bayne on October 28th, 2010 at 6:56 pm said:

I picked up an old uke at a junk shop today that had hot glue on it…and now I can get it off without damaging it. Thanks John and Make!

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- undeded on October 28th, 2010 at 8:17 pm said:
  
  Awesome, this will be great for my salvaging parts from old electronics. I’ve torn up a few trying to use a screwdriver or some other sharp item. I’ll bet thousands of us will try this now and save a lot of electronics. Thanks for sharing your experience.
  Ed
  
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TimLillis on October 28th, 2010 at 8:47 pm said:

I use hot glue for so many things, great to know that we now have a control-z for glue! Thanks for sharing!

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migpics on October 28th, 2010 at 11:59 pm said:

I’ve used isopropyl alcohol for lots of stuff and this is now going on my list.
My best find so far was you can use isopropyl alcohol for removing sharpies stains from suede couches. The stains made possible by my 3 year old!
Thanks for sharing!

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Marcel on October 29th, 2010 at 3:07 am said:

This tells me two things:

1) it’s easy to remove hot glue. Yay!

2) don’t clean hot-glued projects with IPA

Thanks for sharing.

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Silverman on October 29th, 2010 at 6:15 am said:

Can we get Sean to explain the chemistry?

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Alan on October 29th, 2010 at 10:18 am said:

This will be very handy. Thanks very much to John for coming up with it and Goli for publicizing it.

I can take a crack at the chemistry: hot-melt glues are essentially just thermoplastics, so the IPrOH is probably breaking into the polymers and depolymerizing them. You’d only have to depolymerize the molecules right next to the surface for a few seconds to break the adhesive bond.

And now my own IPrOH tip: take the lid off the bottle and carefully pierce a small hole through it with a hot pin. Put the lid back on, and you now have a handy squirt bottle that will let you drip or spray alcohol wherever you need it. It’s a lot quicker than opening and closing the bottle every time, and evaporative losses through the pinhole are essentially nil.

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- Goli Mohammadi on October 29th, 2010 at 12:05 pm said:
  
  Thanks for the science and the added tip, Alan!
  
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Anna on April 24th, 2013 at 5:34 pm said:

I want to hot glue some plastic horses onto a silver tray. I trust that the alcohol will dissolve the hot glue to get them off after my party, but will it ruin the silver?

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