Avoiding Delamination and Waste in Flexible Packaging

‘Intelligent’ blending and dispensing of adhesives is critical to proper lamination,

yet is often lacking.

I n the vast world of flexible packaging,

it is critically important to control the
adhesives used to bond laminates such
as films and foils, which require
meticulous accuracy of blending,
dispensing and applying adhesives to
substrate materials. Yet, the adhesive
controls required for such accuracy are
astonishingly missing from nearly all
systems, even though the consequences are
quite dire – packaging failure, product loss,
and significant downtime.
If not applied in the correct coat
weight, whether too light or too heavy, the
lamination bonding will fail, causing the
overlay to bubble, blister or otherwise
delaminate from the base material, a
nightmarish scenario that worsens as the
problematic packaging travels farther
down the distribution chain.
“The ultimate dilemma created by
delaminated packaging is when it reaches
the store shelf, which is a terrible situation
for the product manufacturer and
packaging supplier and could easily cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says
Ray Mayes, a packaging controls specialist
whose firm, Cereal City Electric (Battle
Creek MI), services the Midwestern food
industry.
“And if you were to seal a food
product into packaging material that later
began to delaminate, you would then be
wasting the product as well as the
packaging,” he adds.
Even when delaminated packaging
never leaves the plant, it normally takes

adhesives about three days to cure. At that
point, if there is a quality problem, the
packaging producer has to go all the way
back to reprinting the packaging, and then
laminate it once again.
“This is a JIT world,” Mayes
explains. “When you have a lamination
error, it is almost impossible to really make
up for it. You have to squeeze back in the
production queue, which is very difficult.
Schedules are always tight and the printer
may be backed up. The printer or
packaging house may be short of materials,
and it can take considerable time to
replenish them. In any event, it’s a very
difficult and costly situation.”
The need for controls
Mayes attributes most delamination and
other coatings problems to a lack of
control with the blending, metering and
dispensing of adhesives. Because most
adhesive blending and dispensing
equipment uses only single gages to meter
adhesive coat weight, if they use any at all,
the process can slip out of control without
the operator or system being aware of it.
“Unless the adhesive’s viscosity
and flow rate are validated by a secondary
metering system, you have no real control
at all,” says Bruce Schuetz, who has
worked in the metering and blending
industry for over 30 years. “It is shocking
to most controls experts that such a
situation could exist in the flexible
packaging industry, but it does.”
The need for a comprehensive
adhesive blending and dispensing feedback
and control system led Schuetz to found
InLine Blending Solutions (Forest Lake,
IL), and to develop a line of solid and
solvent-borne adhesive blending and
dispensing equipment that focuses on true
process control. To provide the required
level of control, the equipment is designed
to enable accurate, validated metering and
dispensing to high-volume inline blending
and mixing operations that are completed
automatically, on demand.
However, as he developed products
in collaboration with customers, Schuetz
realized that through improved process
control he could also incorporate other
beneficial adhesive mixing and dispensing
systems, including improved system
availability, a more healthful working
environment, reduced maintenance
requirements, and enhanced plant
appearance.
Serving multiple needs
Fundamental to innovating advanced
systems, InLine Blending Systems works
closely with prospective customers,
collaborating on system analysis and
performing a no-commitment site survey
to optimize applications and reduce risks.
The outcome of this preliminary work can
lead to important innovations as well as
customer benefits that impact lamination
operations in multiple ways.
For example, Schuetz worked
directly with Ray Mayes when he was
plant engineer with Cello-Foil, now
Exopack, in Battle Creek. Mayes wanted to
improve the verification of coat weight on
two-component polymer adhesives used in
laminating 10-gauge films on packages.
“Before we had the control system,
it wasn’t uncommon that we could have a
delamination claim from a customer that
could be as high as $100,000,” says
Mayes. “Once we got the new control
system in place, we had complete
reliability and never saw any claims.”
Mayes explains that the InLine
Blending Solution’s equipment includes
two independent metering technologies,
and they are also working on a solid-state
polyurethane coat weight analyzer that
measures the coat weight. Until recently,
such “intelligent” microprocessor-based
control of adhesive blending and
dispensing has not been available. simply roll up another unit containing
“With this unique system it is a whatever other adhesive was required for
simple matter to verify mix ratio and coat the particular job.
weight,” says Mayes. “This is a very “We had each unit built on wheels,
powerful capability. You would not think so that we could pull it right up to the
this would be unique, especially in the machine and run one adhesive,” Mayes
world of controls that we have nowadays. explains. “If the next order was using a
But nobody else can do it, as far as I know. different adhesive, we’d just roll the first
You can do anything with a unit out of the way and replace it with
microprocessor, but InLine Blending another machine that was already equipped
Systems is the only adhesive blending and with the needed adhesive. Using that
dispensing equipment that actually has that method, we didn’t have to clean it up and
capability. These advanced systems are go through a lot of changeovers. The
constantly monitoring and validating flow benefit, of course, was increased system
rates.” availability as well as a reduction in the
In the collaborative process of cleanup of the machines.”
designing the equipment, Mayes saw Another very significant
opportunities to improve productivity as maintenance and productivity benefit came
well as ensuring that lamination problems from the incorporation of PTFE (Teflon)
were eliminated. He adapted the adhesive coating on components and seal-less
unit design so that it became modular, pumping cylinders of the blending and
enabling operators to remove a unit dispensing equipment.
containing one type of solid adhesive and
 Many manufacturers use cylinder
rod-type pumps that are exposed to the
adhesive. Because the rods eventually get
adhesive on them, that adhesive begins to
adhere and is cured by the air. On models
containing seals, the rods ultimately
become sticky enough that they literally
tear the seals out of the cylinders, creating
uncontrolled flow and a messy situation.
“The way the new system is
designed, the cylinder and rod are
encapsulated,” explains Mayes. “They are
seal-less and airless. So they never come in
contact with the atmosphere. Any parts
that might be coated with adhesive are not
a problem because the adhesive is not
exposed to the atmosphere, and it never
gets the chance to cure. Therefore, we
could put the equipment aside for two
months and the adhesive would not have
cured, whereas other equipment couldn’t
be left for more than two days without
having to be cleaned.”
The appearance of equipment is
another advantage, and the PTFE coating
of the InLine equipment both eliminates
the extensive cleanup problems of other
equipment and makes it look more
professionally maintained to visitors who
visit the plant.
In every plant today the occurrence
of VOCs is a major environmental and
employee safety concern. Because the
solvents used in many adhesive systems
are both an OSHA and EPA concern,
minimizing the yield of VOCs is another
goal of the InLine Blending Systems
design.
“With this system, the operator
never touches the product,” says Mayes.
“We applied it out of a drum that was
sealed with a valve on it. You simply bring
up the drum on a cart, quick-connect the
hose, and turn the valve on. Everything
else is automatic. That minimizes the
VOCs that can escape from the adhesive
and into the plant air.”
For more information, contact
Inline Blending Solutions Inc., 23535 Park
Road N, Forest Lake, IL 60047; Phone:
(847) 875-2066; Fax (847) 438-2664; E-
mail sales@inlineblendingsolutions.com,
or visit the web site
inlineblendingsolutions.com