How to Use Plexus® Adhesives to Optimize Production and Throughput

Current events have caused many manufacturers to shut down and then reopen. This can cause large backlogs of orders and have manufacturing teams scrambling to get product out the door. Plexus structural adhesives have been utilized to increase the production of parts per hour, decrease the number of manufacturing steps, and reduce the amount of floor space required to manufacture goods.

Plexus products provide a wide range of structural adhesives that offer primerless adhesion for multiple materials. These adhesives often deliver as much strength, or more, than traditional joining techniques, with the added benefit of improved manufacturing output.

Three significant ways Plexus can optimize the joining steps in assembly are:

1. Reduce substrate preparation steps
2. Increase application speed of the joining step
3. Remove downstream steps

Reduce Substrate Preparation Steps

Many manufactured products have to go through upstream preparation steps before reaching the assembly station. For example, when using rivets, holes must be drilled or punched. Welding requires special setups, with some metals requiring scuffing oxidation or coating layers to ensure a good weld. Additionally, certain other adhesives require cleaning, scuffing, and primers to get good adhesion. Plexus’ primerless adhesion technology often drastically reduces or eliminates these preparation steps.

Increase Application Speed of the Joining Step

Laying down a bead of Plexus adhesive is fast. Plexus cartridges can be dispensed as fast as 250 grams per minute. Ten feet of bondline can often be manually applied in one minute or less. This rate of speed is considerably faster and more efficient than welding or placing rivets. Once fixtures or clamps are applied while the Plexus adhesives cure, the operator is free to move to the next step in the assembly. This workflow can be optimized to produce a much faster throughput than traditional methods. If floor space is at a premium, and manufacturing cannot wait for the adhesive to fixture, a hybrid joining approach of rivets + Plexus can be utilized.

If an assembly is already using adhesives, there might still be opportunities to improve throughput. Plexus MMA adhesives have very fast cure rates, which leads to faster unclamp times. Subsequently, this leads to an increase in production per hour or a decrease in needed floor space.

Remove Downstream Steps

The benefits of speeding up production can extend beyond the assembly process. Many times weld marks must be cleaned up or ground away. Rivets and seams still may require sealing. Neither of those post-assembly processes is necessary when using Plexus adhesives. Eliminating downstream steps can also free up floor space for additional lines to increase manufacturing capacity and shift labor to other manufacturing constraint areas.