System for Very Small Quantities

Uti­lized com­po­nents, built-in tech­nol­o­gy, cycle time require­ments and sur­round­ing para­me­ters on a pro­duc­tion line — these are four attrib­ut­es that almost always influ­ence the qual­i­ty lev­el of adhe­sive con­nec­tions in an indus­tri­al envi­ron­ment. To date, man­u­fac­tur­ers from the auto­mo­tive sec­tor, elec­tron­ics indus­try, and med­ical tech­nol­o­gy have been using indi­vid­ual mix­ing and dis­pens­ing sys­tems. The dis­pens­ing sys­tems pro­vid­ed are always best matched to the spe­cif­ic adhe­sive and the spec­i­fied machine design, with the best results and max­i­mum per­for­mance in mind. The prob­lem: There are almost 40,000 adhe­sives with var­i­ous pro­cess­ing para­me­ters. preeflow — a Vis­cotec brand — is now launch­ing the com­pact Eco-Duomix, a dis­pens­ing solu­tion that can mix and dis­pense sil­i­cones (Si), epoxy resins (EP), polyurethane (PU), poly­ester resin (UP) or acrylate.

Cur­rent­ly, there are only a few mix­ing and dis­pens­ing sys­tems that can be used to mix and apply all exist­ing adhe­sives. The biggest chal­lenge are com­po­nents that are dif­fi­cult to mix, since they usu­al­ly have to under­go a longer mix­ing process in order to opti­mal­ly bond. To fill this indus­tri­al gap, preeflow is now launch­ing the Eco-Duomix in full scale pro­duc­tion. Dif­fi­cult to mix two-com­po­nent mate­ri­als, for which pure­ly sta­t­ic mix­ing was pre­vi­ous­ly not suf­fi­cient, can now be suc­cess­ful­ly mixed. Instead of a mix­ing spi­ral, the Eco-Duomix is equipped with a mix­ing cap­sule opti­mized for dead space, which can be used for dynam­ic mix­ing for the first time. Mate­ri­als with the same and/or dif­fer­ent vis­cosi­ties were devel­oped and eval­u­at­ed. Mix­ing ratios rang­ing from 1:1 to 10:1 are tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble. The Eco-Duomix is designed for speeds up to 2000 rpm. Com­pared to the clas­sic mix­ing spi­ral of oth­er dis­pens­ing sys­tems, the mate­r­i­al con­sump­tion in the motor-dri­ven mix­ing cap­sule is sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er, which has a pos­i­tive effect on the over­all cost, espe­cial­ly when using expen­sive materials.

Mixing capsule reduces installation space and delivers optimized material mixtures

In terms of dis­pens­ing quan­ti­ties, preeflow is based on the already estab­lished sys­tems from Vis­coTec and allows a min­i­mum dis­pens­ing quan­ti­ty of up to 0.008 ml with the Eco-Duomix, which can be applied with an accu­ra­cy of +/- 1 %. The dead space opti­mized mix­ing cap­sule used, instead of a mix­ing spi­ral, is avail­able as a con­sum­able and is installed direct­ly at the out­let of the dis­penser. Inside the cap­sule, the motor-dri­ven mix­er ensures opti­mized mix­ing, even of com­po­nents that are dif­fi­cult to process, even at small volume.

An exact appli­ca­tion of even the small­est seal­ing beads is achieved by means of a replace­able dis­pens­ing nee­dle, which is mechan­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed to the mix­ing cap­sule. This elim­i­nates the need for time-con­sum­ing cal­i­bra­tion process­es and always deliv­ers repro­ducible results. The tech­ni­cal imple­men­ta­tion also results in a low­er drip poten­tial and thus sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er thread draw­ing prob­lems on a com­po­nent, which has a pos­i­tive effect on desired cycle times. This aspect is under­lined and demon­strat­ed by the mea­sur­able lin­ear­i­ty between rotor speed and out­put quan­ti­ty. With the Eco-Duomix, even if the den­si­ty and vis­cos­i­ty of the com­po­nents to be mixed vary once due to qual­i­ty dif­fer­ences, the same dis­pens­ing result can always be achieved.

Issues such as adhe­sive type or vis­cos­i­ty become obso­lete in the machine design phase, because they can now be han­dled flex­i­bly and can be spec­i­fied at a lat­er point in time — basi­cal­ly before com­mis­sion­ing. To guar­an­tee this flex­i­bil­i­ty, preeflow uses sta­tor and rotor mate­ri­als in addi­tion to the mix­ing cap­sule, which are almost 100 % com­pat­i­ble with all adhe­sive types avail­able on the mar­ket. The plug & play approach, and well-thought-out inter­faces, pro­mote fast sys­tem inte­gra­tion and easy com­mis­sion­ing. The Eco-Duomix is the ide­al dis­pens­ing solu­tion when it comes to design­ing a sys­tem in which the dis­pens­ing of very small quan­ti­ties of adhe­sive, increased cycle rates, and absolute accu­ra­cy is required.   This way, man­u­fac­tur­ers can keep all options open for the 2‑component mate­ri­als to be imple­ment­ed, right up to the last minute. In addi­tion, this sys­tem is an ide­al fit for med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, as well as the auto­mo­tive, and elec­tron­ics industries.