Here at Quin Global, we’re proud to be a world-leading manufacturer and supplier of super-strong adhesives and innovative tool products. But we offer more than that. We offer a wealth of knowledge resources to contractors, distributors and procurement professionals around the world, helping them to do the job right with the right selection of product.
In the latest advice piece from Quin Global, we look at what measures you can take to protect the integrity of your adhesives this winter, ensuring that you incur fewer surprise costs in the new year that may arise around maintenance or adhesive replacement. Keeping reading to learn more about how you can keep your adhesives sticking through the colder months.
Protect Your Bonds This Winter
Protecting the integrity of any adhesive means regulating its temperature throughout all periods of the year - especially in the colder climates of winter. If your Adhesive gets too cold (after spending a night in subzero temperatures, for example), you will quickly notice that the adhesive will be unusually wet when sprayed, with lots of drops leaking from the nozzle of the gun.
In fact, there are seven tell-tale signs that your adhesive is too cold. If you aren’t storing your adhesives in a heated environment, it’s essential that you lookout for the following:
- Spray pattern is inconsistent.
- Adhesive is ‘spitting’ out.
- Flash off times are longer than usual.
- Materials are coming out of the solution.
- ‘Foaming’ is occurring in the adhesive solution.
- Thickening occurs in the solution.
- Solution has changed in general appearance.
Protect Your Adhesive’s Gun
Is your hose device dripping or leaking? If the canister has been resting at a freezing temperature, this may be why. You can take steps to prevent these issues by taking a number of steps.
For example, Quin Global recommends keeping your adhesive off the factory floor, which is one of the coldest places to store something in winter. Also, heat rises, meaning that placing your adhesive at a higher altitude will do more to keep its temperature at a higher level.
Raise Your Adhesive’s Storage Temperature
This may seem like an obvious step. However, storing your Adhesives in cold environments (below 6 degrees celsius) can impact the integrity of the entire product. Installing heaters is an obvious recommendation. However, depending on the nature of your environment, this may not always be feasible.
There are, however, ways of heating your adhesive’s storage space without taking the costly measure of installing heaters. You can, for example, install heater belts, which are essentially electric blankets for adhesive containers. Wrapping around your adhesive container and connecting to power supplies, these handy solutions ensure that your glue maintains a constant temperature.
If you have no choice but to store in colder conditions, you can raise the temperature of your adhesive canister by placing it in a bucket of warm water for 15 minutes before use. Before you get to work on your bonding job, rock back and forth on the base shoulder of the canister and gently agitate the canister.
Check out our video with a Quin Global expert highlighting some top tips around winter canister care.