For more than 45 years, DuraTech has been providing manufacturers with quality and affordable solutions for their custom graphics needs.
As a 3M Preferred Converter, DuraTech continues its long-standing relationship with 3M by providing OEM facilities with a revolutionary screenable adhesive process: SP7202. This new iteration of screenable adhesive improves the manufacturing process by increasing production efficiencies and lowering costs — which in turn promises lower unit price costs and increased product offerings for you.
In this whitepaper, we’ll highlight why this new screenable adhesive process is different, and how it will revolutionize your operations.
The market today is saturated with inefficient, sub-optimal and difficult-to-use adhesives that have been sabotaging production for years. The problem lies in their makeup. As opposed to DuraTech’s acrylic-based solution, the others are water-based, which result in an inconsistent curing process that leaves the finished adhesive difficult to work with.
To combat this, selective adhesives have emerged as the preferred method. However, this method proves to be just as inefficient. But using selective adhesives can pose problems for DuraTech team members, because it opens the door for waste due to misregistration during the production process.
Enter 3M’s screenable adhesive.
After seven years of collaboration and development, DuraTech and 3M have created SP7202, a significantly improved screenable adhesive which is as effective as laminating adhesives.
As we highlighted in our recent blog, DuraTech Works With 3M in Development of New Adhesive: “Our screenable adhesive is a unique, UV-curable liquid Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA) solution for directly printing fine shapes. Suitable for flatbed screen or stencil printing, it allows manufacturers to precisely print PSA on parts using conventional screen printing and UV curing equipment. What this means for fabricators is the ability to leverage additive manufacturing to rapidly fulfill orders while minimizing process waste.”
Since SP7202 is an acrylic-based solution which utilizes a specific and repeatable UV curing process, this results in an effective and reliable adhesive that leaves the inconsistent water-based screenable adhesives in the dust.
Other key benefits of SP7202:
- Excellent adhesion to polycarbonate, polyester and higher surface energy materials
- Water and chemical resistant
- Offers more flexibility for designing and fabricating parts
- UV curable in one to two seconds
- Wide range of storage temperatures
- Long open times
When you partner with DuraTech and take full advantage of the revolutionary SP7202 screenable adhesive, you will find major changes in your operations, costs savings and consumer capabilities.
Our screenable adhesive process saves money during production by greatly reducing unnecessary waste. Since the screenable adhesive process is extremely accurate and only uses as much material as is necessary for the job, it reduces the direct waste of unused and unnecessary adhesives and liners, and also reduces the indirect waste of labor and processing costs.
This savings is passed on to your bottom line in the form of lower unit costs.
Utilizing SP7202 during the screenable adhesive process results in a level of accuracy that is unmatched by the competition. The screening tolerance for our process is +/- .015”, compared to hand-applying tolerances being +/- .060”. This eliminates misregistrations during installation to further complement your bottom line.
Finally, our screenable adhesive process opens the door for you to offer more creative and useful designs that simply cannot be achieved with traditional selective adhesives.
Nick LaBelle, Senior Technical Engineer at 3M, tells us for our article, “Not only does [SP7202] offer robust performance, but it’s also enabling designers to open up their creativity and do things that were either impossible or not feasible with other technologies using subtractive manufacturing processes. And by simplifying the manufacturing process, fabricators can help the end customer meet their sustainability targets in an economically viable way.”
By now, you know just how powerful and revolutionary DuraTech’s new screenable adhesive process is. A product that took seven years of collaboration and development with 3M is a product that is worth utilizing.
Contact DuraTech with a picture of your current part, and we will show you how to improve it, reduce waste, and lower production costs with our screenable adhesive.
