Labor is one of the highest costs facing turf/sports field assembly companies. To minimize the amount of time need to assemble the seams of a sports field the hot melt machinery must be taken into account.
The standard hot melt systems used for on-site turf seam gluing applications are typically small 120 VAC systems with small gear pumps. These systems have insufficient melt rate and pump capacity for most applications and can dramatically increase the field assembly time.
Turf assembly companies require that high volumes of bituminous asphalic black hot melt are quickly applied to four inch tape or seams with coating thicknesses of .005″. This equates to approximately 10 lbs. of hot melt for every 100 feet of gluing.
For this application a 240 VAC 50 lb. hot melt tank (3500 watt, 240 VAC single phase) is needed with 1-2 lb per minute pump, 16′ abrasion resistant hose, High Flow handgun with .055 nozzle tip. Dual orifice nozzles can be added to the gun for single stroke gluing or a 2′ wand can be attached to the gun with a heated holster for the wand mounted on the cart.
For additional gluing convenience the system should be mounted on a wide footprint cart with a boom, hose cradle and tool balancer.