fastening & assembly solutions and technology - Approved Business

It’s encouraging to hear a supplier offering
a solution to a manufacturing problem,
which may not be comprised entirely
of his own products. In manufacturing,
the fastening process often works better
with a variety of products not necessarily
from the same source.
“I’m not beholden to Lohmann products,”
said Roger Churchill, managing
director of Lohmann Technologies (UK).
“We will always supply the best tape for
the solution. When an application would
be best served by another company’s
products, it will be specified.”
Embedded designs can cut overall
costs despite higher capital costs at the
outset. “We don’t just sell sticky tape, we
engineer solutions,” Churchill said suggesting
that if a process can be improved,
the cost of the tape is largely irrelevant.
“We’re not the cheapest and make no
bones about it,” Churchill declared. “We
add value; it’s more than just a product.”
Research and development is important
to help create an engineered solution.
Training is also vital and sending staff to
visit the parent company in Germany is
not unusual.
Non-disclosure agreements and
patents are often an issue in this type of
business. “We can’t suggest a solution
which is used by a competitor,” said
Churchill. “NDAs work both ways so
again the value is not just in the tape.”
Applications are demanding as they
are varied. At one end of the scale,
Lohmann has provided solutions for fixing
optical lenses when they are being
ground in the manufacture of spectacles
and equally demanding is the fixing of
printing plates to the rollers on the press
where exact positioning is essential for
registration and clean removal is a
requirement.
Adhesion is highly dependent on the
surface energy of the material which is
akin to the flatness of the surface. A spider
can climb up a pane of glass because
the surface is minutely rutted, allowing
microscopic hairs on its legs to grip on
the indentations. Surface energy can be
adjusted chemically or by coatings.
Sticking dissimilar materials in the
automotive industry is an interesting
challenge. A recent example involved a
tape to fasten the strengthening ribs to the
roof of Range Rover’s new Evoque
model. A tape provided the required
strength while maintaining the clean
roofline dictated by the design.
Perhaps the most demanding of all
automotive environments is Formula One
motor racing. The weights for balancing
a traditional road wheel
used to be made of lead
and clipped to the rim. Due
to a combination of alloy
wheel, low profile tyres
and environmental legislation,
lead has now been
replaced with self-adhesive
steel or copper
weights which are stuck to
the rims. Lohmann has
worked with balance
weight specialist Trax for a
number of years and sup-
plied the adhesive solution
for Formula One wheel
balance weights at the end
of the Bridgestone era.
Adhesive tapes are used in the lamination
of substrates in the touch screen
technology featured in electronic devices
such as mobile phones, Kindle readers
and iPads. UV curable, conductive and
printable tapes are die cut and then built
into the layers of the screen to make a
spacer.
Lohmann Adhesive Tape Systems,
headquarters in Neuwied, Germany.
Lohmann has 160 years’ experience in
designing and coating technical adhesive
tape. The company was formed in 1851
and is now a privately owned company
with around 70 shareholders who are all
FAST OCTOBER 2011
ADHESIVE TAPES
Adding value to adhesive
tape application
Tell Roger Churchill the problem and he’ll give you a tape to solve the challenge. Paul Gay talked to
the managing director of Milton Keynes based Lohmann Technologies UK
related. Globalisation began in the 1990s
and now the company boasts three coating
and conversion plants in North
America, one in Latin America and one
each in China and India. In Europe, there
are three coating plants and 12 converting
factories including the Milton Keynes
facility in the UK.
The UK Company was formed 18
years ago to provide specialised technical
support to its customers, locally.
Operating from its new 19,500 sq ft factory
in Milton Keynes, Lohmann
Adhesive Tape Systems offers UK and
Irish customers local production in any
Range Rover fixes the roofing ribs of the new Evoque model with
adhesive tapes
required format, from logs, rolls and
spools, to sheets and technical die-cuts
using 17 machines which have been
either specially built or customised to
carry out their die cutting and converting
duties.
“We only loose customers for two reasons,”
commented Churchill. “They
either go bust or our products get
designed out of the application.
Sometimes customers go
away but as often as not they
come back.”
LOHMANN TECHNOLOGIES UK
01296 337 888
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