Hot melt parts restoration: how it works

Do you have a hot melt tank or glue gun that’s started to act up? Are your production lines slowing down a bit, or is glue product coming out a bit uneven, and packaging is poorly sealed?

The first thing you need to do is inspect your tank or glue gun for a build-up of adhesive. You can’t miss it – look for thick, gloopy, honey-coloured glue at best, and black, charred, tar-like substance at worst. This is all overheated glue, and it’s ruining the function of your hot melt equipment.

Here are a couple of photos for reference:

The main sign that your hot melt equipment parts have a glue problem is the production line having slowed down.

If you see degraded glue in your equipment, you need a professional hot melt part cleaning service. We do just that. Benefits of professional cleaning include real deep cleaning, and our main cleaning products are eco-friendly, too. Take a look at this transformed glue gun and this impressive before and after of a professionally cleaned hot melt tank.

So, how could you have avoided all of this?

Temperature control

The trick is to never let the adhesive get too hot. Although it’s more common than not for production lines to leave glue tanks running overnight, we urge that you don’t do this. It may save ten minutes a day in reheating up to usable temperatures, but it often causes weeks’ worth of unforeseeable downtime later on, as equipment begins to falter and production grinds to a halt.

One way around this is to make use of the standby button that every hot melt tank comes equipped with. Standby mode allows the glue to cool to a moderate temperature, which will then not solidify inside the components, but will also reheat quicker the following morning. Read our blog on the standby button here.

Proactive maintenance

You should also consider creating a proactive maintenance plan, such as committing to taking 15 minutes once per week to inspect your machinery and look for signs of glue build-up which could lead to equipment malfunction later down the road. If you spot this early you have time to schedule proper cleaning without having to deal with unplanned downtime.

If you’d like your hot melt equipment professionally cleaned, then contact us by filling out our enquiry form here.