The production of office furniture, from chairs to tables, requires copious amounts adhesives during the manufacturing process.
Consequently, the buildup of adhesive on the fixtures, blades, and machine parts used to produce said furniture causes major headaches for the parties responsible for maintaining and cleaning said equipment.
The equipment must be cleaned regularly to ensure a quality product is being produced. However, because of the very nature of adhesive, this is not a quick and easy process. As a result, excessive amounts of spare tooling must be available for swapping in and out…weekends are dedicated to staff cleaning machines during non-production hours…if weekends or staff is not available, downtime ensues. And if the adhesive is not cleaned, defects occur.
This is the exact scenario a local furniture manufacturer was dealing with when they approached DECC. They were attempting to mitigate the issue by utilizing a Teflon™ tape they could apply themselves.
However, the tape was tedious to apply, damaged relatively easy, and had to be redone on a less than desirable occurrence. In terms of the machines that were accumulating adhesive, the tape could not be used and they had to commit maintenance staff to clean the machines every weekend.
The Solution: A Non-Stick, PTFE Release Coating
DECC applied a PTFE based non-stick coating to their chair tooling to start. Not only did the coating help reduce the accumulation of adhesive to the tooling, the time it took to clean tooling was dramatically decreased due to the increased ease of the process.
As a result, DECC applied the coating to not only the rest of their chair tooling, but to cutting blades, rollers, and various machine parts. The coating applied was very durable and exhibited long-lasting performance. Almost all of the new tooling the furniture manufacture acquires that will be used in an adhesive application is now sent to DECC first to have the PTFE, non-stick coating applied.
A machine component used in furniture manufacturing prior to the application of a non-stick coating for glue release
DECC has since provided the same type of service to numerous other furniture and automotive manufacturers that were experiencing the same issue.
If your manufacturing process involves adhesives and this issue hits close to home, contact DECC today. We would be happy to coat a sample part for free for you to trial.