Competitive pressures have driven manufacturing companies to improve productivity, increase product quality and to decrease hazards to the workforce.  Recent advances in latent curatives have enabled formulators to develop one-part systems covering a wide range of assembly applications as diverse as thermoplastic and metal bonding, filament winding, electronic assembly, and structural adhesives.  Cure temperatures as low as 80 degrees Celsius are possible while maintaining shelf-life at 25 degrees Celsius for over 3 months.

These factors have created an opportunity for Fielco Adhesives to deliver a value added one-part replacement for many conventional two-part systems.

Several advantages and improvements associated with the replacement of two-part systems with one-part products are as follows:

• Elimination of two-part dispensing and metering equipment.

• Low temperature curing formulations can now be used for bonding thermoplastics such as ABS that have always required the use of 2-part epoxies due to temperature constraints.

• Reduction of operator labor needed to maintain meter mix equipment and components or to manually weigh and mix product.

• Reduction of manufacturing process equipment capital cost by elimination of expensive meter mix equipment and associated expense with maintenance, spare parts and cleaning.

• Reduction of labor required to oversee, maintain cleaning of pumps, vats, scales and other associated manufacturing equipment. 

• Improve raw material procurement and flow by replacing two containers associated for the product with two-part system to one for one-part systems.

• Elimination of pot life considerations, processing line downtime resulting from product viscosity exceeding process tolerances.

• Elimination of waste resulting from unused mixed adhesive and subsequent waste disposal costs. 

• Elimination of mix ratio tolerance concerns and the ever-present fear of using an epoxy system outside of mix ratio ranges.

• Improved final product consistency and quality as a result of more consistent adhesive or coating.
  
  
• Opportunities for improvement in adhesive or coating performance where specific sacrifices may have been made to maximize pot life, formulating to required viscosities, and mix ratio requirements.  
  
  
• Improved worker safety and hazardous communication requirements with one-part epoxies resulting from the elimination of volatile corrosive curing agent components from raw material inventory and limiting exposure of the chemicals to operators.

» Read More About Fielco's One-Part Adhesive Technology