Designing beyond mechanical fastener limits
Carmel Saville, marketing executive at First Stop Packaging, has penned an article on structural adhesives and eliminating the use of mechanical fasteners.
Monday, 09 Oct 2017 17:23 GMT
First Stop Packaging is an online tapes, adhesives, and packaging company
In today’s market, the demand for innovative products and advanced solutions to design and manufacturing limitations has never been higher. The benefits of designing and building products with 3M Scotch-Weld Structural Adhesives help to drive product success throughout the sign industry.
One of the most interesting benefits is the ability to eliminate the use of mechanical fasteners such as rivets, screws, bolts, and welds etc.
By using 3M Scotch-Weld Structural Adhesives, businesses of all sizes are provided with a wide range of benefits for all stages of product development. These include:
Advanced design solutions
Significantly improved aesthetics: The use of structural adhesives can improve the product’s appearance with invisible joints and smoother bond lines. They can reduce weight and noise, as well as enhance corrosion and fatigue resistance, and much more.
Freedom of design: Structural adhesives provide a multi-material bonding solution. Join composites to metal, build with hard-to-bond plastics, and use thinner gauge, lighter weight materials.
Performance optimisation
High strength, flexible bonds are achieved: Adhesives bond and seal simultaneously. They also eliminate stress concentration that is often found when using mechanical fasteners absorbing shock and vibration to give ultimate performance.
Increased durability: These adhesives offer great resistance to chemicals, environment, galvanic corrosion, fatigue, and material separation along edges or corners.
In today's market, the demand for innovative products and advanced solutions to design and manufacturing limitations has never been higher”
Improved efficiencies
Enhance processes: Compared to mechanical fasteners, the use of structural adhesives help to reduce labour and material costs. Build faster with minimal surface preparation and match cure rates to your process needs.
As a premier distributor of 3M, First Stop Packaging stocks a large range of 3M structural epoxy/acrylic/Polyeurethane adhesives.
All two-part adhesives cure upon mixing the two components with a static mixing nozzle.
Two epoxy adhesives: 3M epoxy structural adhesives range have the best overall performance and highest strength. This includes having the best resistance to high temperature, outdoor weathering, and solvent resistance, together with the highest tensile strength.
Two-part acrylic adhesives: Also provide excellent bond strength and durability and are a good all-round product. These products bond metals, plastics, and composites such as Dibond and Alucobond. The new generation 2K family offers the highest performance within the acrylic range, giving very high impact resistance, non-sag controlled bond line, and good peel and shear strength.
Two part polyeurethane adhesives: Great products where strength and flexibility or movement within the joint maybe required. They are excellent for applications where high shock loading and/or impact resistance is needed. They are particularly good for bonding different materials to each other where there will be movement/expansion.
If you have any questions about 3M structural adhesives, get in touch with the friendly team at First Stop Packaging by emailing enquiries@firststopppackaging.co.uk.
