Attaining the perfect case and carton seal is a balance of the right hot melt packaging adhesive, the ideal operating parameters and a consistent adhesive pattern. Food and beverage manufacturers rely on hot melt packaging adhesives to assure a strong seal for their products. Unplanned downtime on a packaging line can be significantly reduced when hot melt tanks are filled consistently.

Establishing a routine for filling hot melt tanks will keep the packaging adhesive temperature consistent and prevent char formation, which can lead to plugged filters and nozzles. Issues can arise when a hot melt adhesive tank is:

• Filled inconsistently – results in variable adhesive application temperature and pattern
• Filled below a certain level – known as underfilling, results in overheating the adhesives and char formation
• Filled over a certain level – known as overfilling, increases the potential for dead spots and adhesive waste

LOCTITE^® General Purpose Structural Adhesives, powered by hybrid adhesive technology, are a breakthrough in structural bonding for limitless repair.

Customer Challenges

• A new Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) design required a robust thermal management solution with no outgassing risk.
• As the system can be used in a variety of machines and production environments, the thermal materials must be conducive to many conditions.
• The customer requested the use of a silicone-free thermal solution to avoid silicone contamination, but wanted to maintain the stress control and heat benefits generally consistent with silicone-based thermal interface materials (TIMs).

Application Challenges and Objectives

Data center switches, routers, and servers are incorporating larger, more powerful CPUs/GPUs to manage increasing data processing and bandwidth demands.

The new semiconductor packages, many containing multiple large dies, are seeing higher power concentrations, resulting in elevated operational temperatures.

At the same time, new generations of switch, router, and server designs are becoming more compact, which limits the thermal material types that are effective with very thin bond lines.

Customer Challenge

• Modern-day motor drives are integrating more complex power devices to manage growing energy efficiency requirements.  The customer’s next-generation motor controller required a thermal interface material (TIM) to manage new performance challenges and higher power densities. 
• As the IC power module is subjected to motor vibration, reliability and stability of the thermal interface material – with no material migration -- is critical to enable operational integrity.
• Any thermal material selected had to meet challenging metrics: Electrical isolation with high dielectric strength (>5000 Volts) and low thermal resistance are necessary to meet in-application conditions.

Henkel’s BERGQUIST® battery pack gap filler helps achieve reliable heat management performance in EV battery packs while vastly reducing the volume of worn out tooling parts entering the recycling and waste streams. When installed on the line, it reduced maintenance costs by 90%, lengthened service intervals, and reduced the number of worn parts headed for recycling or disposal. 

Hot melt tank pressure impacts the rate of adhesive flow and amount of product being dispensed. Operators must manage the pressure setting, integrate set speed in the application and avoid adhesive build-up and overspray. Tank pressure is critical to efficiency on the production line.

Preventing char buildup on packaging production lines allows the equipment to run more efficiently. Implementing some simple processes can reduce char buildup and allow hot melt packging adhesive to work more effectively.

Effective Management Maintains Package Integrity and Reduces Waste

Consumer demand for convenience and single-use products continues to grow. At the same time, they want to minimize waste and are choosing more socially responsible products. 

Save energy costs in aluminum beverage can production

Request Henkel's white paper on high crash-resistant structural adhesives for increased lightweighting and crash performance.

With the increasing use of plastics in automotive engineering, plastic repairs gains more and more importance. Instead of replacing e.g. the full bumper plastic repair allows to reduce material costs and helps recycling. For a more sustainable repair.

Find out How to Remove Red Threadlocker

Gaskets are used to prevent leakage of fluids or gases by forming impervious barriers. For successful gasketing, it is necessary for the seal to remain intact, and leak-free over a long period of time.