From element of crisis to opportunity

Potential savings in gluing with hotmelt adhesives

The figures for 2011 show a significant increase in energy prices in recent years, that point to a future of ever-rising prices. Also confirmed the rising prices of raw materials and natural resins, which are liable to lead to a considerable rise in the cost of adhesives. Reasons these, that place the companies in front of a crucial question: "How to reduce costs?”
Nordson is capable of offering solutions that enable savings in the application of hotmelt adhesives, thanks to high performance systems and encourages users to adopt two effective approaches.
 
Reduction in the amount of adhesive - To reduce the amount of adhesive a continuous bead of adhesive can be replaced with a series of dots or broken lines of glue. This method has a positive impact: The glue bonding is often more resistant and enables savings up to 50%. The innovative Miniblue Nordson™ II pneumatic gun, on the market for over a year, gives great results in this direction. Thanks to the long life of the module (over 100 million cycles) adhesive can also be saved at high production speeds. In addition to the Miniblue™ II pneumatic guns, Nordson fields electrically operated modules able to operate for more than 200 million cycles. The feedback for Surebead® modules is also positive. The particular configuration of the needle significantly reduces nozzle clogging and allows applications with less “whiskers” even in the case of adhesive difficult to use, ensuring further savings.
 
Reduction in operating costs - The Nordson Fulfill® system for automatic adhesive filling, fully airtight, offers an appropriate way for containing operating costs (second significant aspect). In fact it not only enables the elimination of manual topping up, avoiding over-filling and consequent spilling, hence waste of material, but its also avoids downtime, reducing waste caused by the no-load operation of the gluing system.
Nordson Fulfill® also increases efficiency and reduces the need (and therefore the cost) of maintenance of the system, thanks to an optimal level of adhesive in the tank; at the same time it prevents contamination of the adhesive with dust or other contaminants and prevents the discharge of fumes from the melting tank.
Further but no less important benefits of the system are safety related: operators in the first place run less risk of coming into contact with hot surfaces or molten adhesive, and the work environment is cleaner and healthier.
The hotmelt adhesive tank can be placed away from the melter. The average payback period of the automatic filling system is less than a year.