Meler, the respecte gluing solutions partner, provides customers with its new test laboratories. Equipped with the latest technology for the application of hot melt adhesives, they will allow real simulations of each project to be carried out before it is put into operation on the production line.
Meler, a company dedicated for over 40 years to the application of industrial adhesives across a multitude of sectors, opens the doors of the nerve centre of its innovation: its R&D&I laboratories where feasibility and prototyping tests are carried out. Meler’s objective is to improve the efficiency of adhesive processes and, to achieve this, it is essential to have in-depth knowledge of the characteristics of each application in a real working environment.
How is this achieved?
On the one hand, Meler offers its ‘gluing knowledge’ experience and its ‘gluing tech’ (Meler’s range of products) and on the other, the manufacturer presents the production challenges faced by its business. Explaining the project, person to person, is essential to be able to offer the right adhesive solution.
“Communication with the customer is essential from the very beginning, but when you have good technical assets and multiple equipment, it is easy to replicate the working conditions of the customers,” says Mikel Zubiri, Test Lab Engineer. “We have a robotic cell, a lamination roll, a test bench and two winders that allow us to do lamination tests with heads of up to 2,000mm. And, of course, complying with all the safety requirements for these tests.”
New production challenges
In an increasingly competitive industrial context, many of the projects carried out in the Meler Lab have involved changes from conventional EVA adhesives to reactive PUR adhesives. Alberto Martínez, Meler’s Product Manager specialising in the wood sector, points out that furniture manufacturing is inevitably tending towards the use of structural adhesives with greater resistance to humidity.
According to Alberto, this is the only way to offer a long-lasting product, and he cites an example: “We recently collaborated with a manufacturer who wanted to test a robotised solution for the application of PUR adhesives on their products. The investment cost was holding them back. Our robotic cell served as a pilot for the customer, who followed the process closely and the excellent results encouraged them to make the investment to replicate the same process on their manufacturing line.”
A safe and confidential working environment
For Meler, a company with an intensive knowledge of adhesive applications, it is necessary to collaborate with companies and manufacturers to improve the adhesive application business together.
And to do so, the confidentiality of each working method must be respected. Meler is committed to building relationships of trust in which all procedures, simulations and documentation remain confidential. Each project that enters Meler Lab does so with a specialised technical team, authorised and trained to work in these circumstances.
Investment in innovation represents an important part of Meler’s strategy which, together with its vocation for service, offers manufacturers the opportunity to face, in the best possible conditions, the new challenges imposed by the industry.
