Tankless Melters In Packaging

Suprotik Das, Managing Director, Nordson India, gives an insight into the most expensive problems faced in the use of hot melt adhesives, their root causes and solutions.

OF THE many challenges that packaging managers face, perhaps the most ironic is the poor performance of high quality hot melt adhesives. Products that fail to bond on the packaging line, or pop open on the supermarket shelf in spite of a high end adhesive having been used, are just a part of that story. Frequent line stoppages, excessive consumption of expensive adhesive and unnecessarily high human resource costs add to the inefficiencies that we seem to take for granted. An understanding of the root cause of these problems allows us to prescribe appropriate solutions and truly benefit from these modern adhesives. These are solutions that are available today, thanks to the rapid strides that state-of-the-art adhesive application equipment have made in recent years.

If you have run a packaging line that uses hot melt adhesive (HMA), you have faced situations where the product fails to bond at the end of the line, or fails to remain bonded till the consumer opens it. Whether it’s a cartoning line, a case erector, a top-and-bottom case sealer, or another adhesive application in packaging, this problem is common. Equally common are two responses: (a) increase the pump pressure, (b) raise the temperature setting. Sadly, these are at best temporary solutions. Often, they are the wrong solutions. They simply do not address the likely root causes of the failure.

So, what might the causes be? We will discuss here two possibilities that are most commonly encountered:

Inadequate or missing adhesive beads is the first. A common problem in packaging lines, this is more often than not, caused by blocked nozzles, which in turn are triggered by the contamination in the system. This is the root cause.