What is YOUR Unique Adhesive Application?
I started in the glue industry less than a year ago and I realized very quickly there is a LOT to know about glue. As a Mom and former child, my only exposure to glue was the good old white Elmer’s glue. Elmer’s has come a long way since I was a kid with all the various colors and glitter that’s been added, but I’m willing to bet the formula is still the same and it continues to work well on all the various art projects my kids come up with. What I’ve learned though, after joining CGM, is not all glue is created equal. What works on one application may not work on another. Whether you are gluing corrugated, wood, foam, plastic, paper, fabric…there is a glue that works best with it and we are here to help you find the right fit.
As an inside sales rep, I get a lot of calls and emails asking about our various products. Customers know what they want the glue to do and it’s our job to find the right glue for the job.
There is definitely a science to it. Every glue stick, adhesive dot, pail, hot melt pillow, and pellet has a formula associated with it and while they may look very similar in size, texture and color they have very different qualities and can bond very different things. In fact, we stock 104 unique adhesive products in our warehouse and have hundreds of other adhesives that our customers buy on a consistent basis that we do not stock. We also manufacture our own glue sticks and adhesive dots. We have multiple glue stick formulas and can make almost all of them in six different diameters and any length. On the adhesive dots, we have four different tacks, four different profiles, two standard configurations, however; we can create countless custom configurations – that is a lot of choices!
Here are the questions we will need answered before we can recommend a product:
1 – What is the adhesive application? Tell us what you are bonding together. The more detail we have about the application, the better. It’s important to give us as much information as possible.
2 – What are the substrates? Are there any coatings on it? Picture yourself walking through a store with small appliances. Boxes that hold blenders or coffee pots in them typically have very shiny pictures on them and the glue that bonds these together will be much different that the plain boxes you might receive from an Amazon purchase.
3 – What are the high and low temperatures the end product will need to withstand? These are important questions especially when we are working with food packaging.
4 – What is the open and compression time? Knowing if this will be applied by a machine or by hand will help us determine the right fit.
5 – Are there any regulations that need to be met?
The next time you pick up the phone or send us an email about a recommendation just remember we are going to ask the question, “What is YOUR Unique Adhesive Application?”