Improved efficiency is an overriding concern in today’s competitive environment. An easy place to start is with adhesive usage. Most automatic hot melt applications can be adjusted to operate with less hot melt adhesive. When planned and executed properly, adhesive reduction can offer significant long term cost savings.
Before making any changes to your hot melt system or adhesives, you should produce sample blanks with non-compressed hot melt and glued samples for evaluation by your hot melt adhesive and hot melt machinery suppliers.
To make thorough recommendations for your adhesive process, it is important to include the following information with your samples:
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- Hot Melt System Temperatures
- Air Pressure Used for the Pump
- Nozzle Tip Orifice Size
- Adhesive Specification Sheet
- Current Consumption per Package
- Type of Hot Melt System Currently in Use
- Speed of Operation
- Frequency of Hot Melt System Maintenance
- Pattern Coverage Requirements.To include:
- Number of Beads
- Bead Profile
- Centers Between the Beads
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- It can also be helpful to have your engineering, maintenance, and production personnel review these same samples. They are often able to provide valuable insight into your adhesive application and consumption process.
Too often, hot melt adhesive is used to compensate for other deficiencies in the production process. Dirty and/or poorly maintained hot melt systems can result in reduced adhesive bond quality. Nozzle cloggage issues can merely be the result of an incorrect orifice size on the nozzles. Another point to consider with regard to potential adhesive waste is hot melt application temperature.If the temperature is too hot, the adhesive is too thin, and this can result in excess amounts of adhesive being dispensed.
The case, carton, corrugated box sealing and erecting industry is one that has seen significant improvements on adhesive savings with the use of professional and in-house adhesive consumption consultation. It is important to note that incorrect compression of the adhesive and substrate on the erector or sealer can affect the sealing capacity of hot melts between substrates.
Be sure to also read our article, “Use Lower Cost Hot Melt” to learn about the benefits of using “Melt on Demand” Hot Melt Tanks and how they too can reduce your production costs.
Contact Glue Machinery Corporation today to discuss your application and how we can improve your adhesive savings.
Call Pierce Covert, President of Glue Machinery Corporation at 1(888)202-2468
or email Pierce at info@gluemachinery.com