New Hampshire Patent of the Month – August 2021
Using spray paints and water-based adhesives regularly faces adhesive overspray problems. This is due to the air-atomized spraying devices. The overspray produced presents itself as a “fog” in the factory, carried long distances and adhering to surfaces far from the original application location. This is not only a nuisance, but a health hazard to employees, and a waste of product. Some solutions used air extraction hoods, but those are limited to small objects. Other attempts have used low fogging air-atomized guns, which do minimize the overspray, but are easily miscalibrated and rendered useless by untrained operators. Worthen Industries designed an alternative gun which overcomes this problem.
Their airless adhesive spray gun can deliver water-based adhesives with minimal overspray. The spray gun has a trigger attached to the handle which controls the position of the actuating needle. This needle moves between closed and open positions. When open, the needle exposes an orifice which allows adhesive through an inlet port. When closed, this hole is blocked. A pressurizing structure controls the quantity of adhesive passed through the nozzle without any air involved. The adhesive is atomized as it exits the gun tip and is spread in a controlled spray pattern, and enters at a pressure below 150 psi.This ultimately leads to reduced fog, overspray, and related nuisances. This improves the accuracy of the spray gun so much that automating the spray process becomes a potential solution as well. Prior, human control was required in order to accommodate this overflow in real time. With an accurate, airless gun, an automated version could be used to further enhance efficiency. The better spray pattern has yet another improvement, by providing a stronger bond than seen before as a result of the accurate and consistent spray pattern. This novel solution helps improve the water-based adhesive spray process on numerous fronts.
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