UK vehicle manufacturers bond with Advanced Adhesives

Two UK automotive manufacturers contacted Advanced Adhesives, which was tasked with working with them to come up with a bonding solution for an innovative polypropylene instrument panel, or dashboard.

This called for an adhesive to permanently bond together components of a LGF PP Instrument Panel, without any surface treatment, resist temperatures in excess of 95C and achieve structural joint capability, with the adhesive having the wherewithal of passing automotive emissions testing, due to interior use.

“Advanced Adhesives was invited to submit its PP3000 adhesive for testing, with initial tests being carried out with our in-house Tensometer and lab facilities, and the PP3000 proved to have excellent bond strength, giving substrate failure to all components tested,” states the company.

Success across multiple tests

“As such, PP3000 was proposed as a product solution to these two manufacturers and in all subsequent testing the PP3000 proved to have substrate failure throughout, even without any surface treatments. PP3000 was tested not only for strength and longevity of bond, via ageing tests, but was also tested for emissions and again passed with flying colours.”

Simple application of the PP3000 was achieved initially with the use of pneumatic hand-held bi-mixer guns to dispense the pre-mixed adhesive direct to the components. As production of the vehicle increased, the application process was scaled up and the adhesive dispensed via a bespoke robot dispensing system, with the bead of adhesive being dispensed quickly and accurately.