Spray Who?

SPRAYMATION, INC., is a manufacturer of electromechanical machinery that basically consists of equipment for the application of thermoplastic adhesives as well as "cold" adhesives for industrial applications in packaging, product assembly, and nonwoven converting operations.

Almost every conceivable industry requires adhesive application equipment whether it is used for sealing individual boxes of corn flakes, sealing corrugated cases, bonding in various non-woven applications such as disposable diaper manufacture, or in constructing an assembled product such as speaker enclosures. Equipment is provided directly to end users and/or to Original Equipment Manufacturers who purchase such equipment for installation on equipment that they manufacture, such as the manufacturer of case sealing equipment.

Along with the adhesive application equipment line, there are other products that involve automatic spray painting to the automotive industry and coating formulators for laboratory use, and basically include equipment that SPRAYMATION has been providing for some 40 years.

Spraymation began in New Jersey in 1958 (moved its headquarters to Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1978). In the beginning, the company was primarily involved in automatic spray painting applications including the supplying of complete painting systems to companies such as General Motors and others for their automotive assembly plants in various locations throughout the United States and the world.

In addition, equipment was also supplied to automotive manufacturers and coating formulators to handle their requirements of painting test panels, which was referred to as Automatic Test Panel Spray units. Still another product involved the fabrication of painting units to automatically coat the inside of electrical conduit as is required by the National Electrical Code.

In Spraymation's early years, much of its business related to automatic painting systems. Spraymation was also developing applicator heads for various fluids including adhesives, which brought about the design and patent of the ELECTROMATIC Applicator Head, which today is the major component in all SPRAYMATION adhesive application systems. At first, ELECTROMATIC Applicator Heads were provided for use with a customer's existing adhesive application system, as design work continued on a complete adhesive application system. Early versions of the ELECTROMATIC Applicator Head were not heated and were used for applying cold adhesives, paint, marking fluids, perfumes, and other similar fluids.

The advent of the use of thermoplastic or hot melt adhesives in fields other than the manufacture of shoes offered an ideal market for a complete hot melt adhesive application system, which became known as our THERMOPULSE systems.

Thermoplastic or hot melt adhesives are materials which are solid at room temperature, but with the addition of heat, become liquid (usually similar to automotive motor oil when hot) and can then be applied in various patterns such as lines, dots, multiple lines or dots, or in some cases, airless spray patterns and/or air dispensed or air atomizing spray patterns.

Hot melt adhesives are used in just about every conceivable industry wherever quick setting adhesives are required. The major advantage of a hot melt is its ability, once heat is removed, to set up and bond quickly.

Speed of adherence was most important to many applications where production speeds were constantly being increased. One example involves an application where "Elmers Glue" had been previously used. With cold adhesives, case sealers (automatic equipment designed to seal top and bottom flaps of corrugated containers) required compression sections which were up to 15 feet in length and were for the purpose of holding down flaps of the container until the cold adhesive had "set up" enough to allow the container to be moved, shipped, etc. When such case sealers were converted over to a hot melt adhesive application system, the compression section, due to the speed of the hot melt, could be reduced to 15 inches or less which resulted in the ability to seal cases at much higher production speeds and also greatly increased plant space.

As almost every item requires packaging of some sort, many hot melt applications involve packaging. The next largest category of usage pertains to product assembly that means the bonding of various components together to result in a finished product. Hot melts are also used to encapsulate, seal, or pot various assemblies

The potential applications for hot melt adhesives are virtually endless and each week new applications are worked on, which will require new applicators and methods of applications. New hot melts with different characteristics for bonding various materials are also constantly being developed which at times can require new types of dispensing equipment.

Hot melt adhesives require controlled heat to transform them into a liquid state, which allow them to be pumped and dispensed through an adhesive system. With this in mind, all areas of a hot melt application system such as our THERMOPULSE system, must be heated and uniformly controlled including the adhesive tank, the pumping system used, the hoses used to transfer the adhesive, and the applicator head such as our ELECTROMATIC head. If any of these areas, that the adhesive is in contact with, is not heated, the adhesive would solidify and could not be applied.

Only after the adhesive is actually applied and has "cooled" (which takes only seconds or less), does the adhesive set up and bond the materials together.

Today, there are approximately 8 companies involved in the manufacturer and supply of hot melt adhesive application systems in the world, and SPRAYMATION is one of the few companies who, along with standard systems, also provides "custom designed" units to meet a user's particular requirements.

Cold adhesive application equipment and systems continue to be supplied for similar types of applications by SPRAYMATION including many operations involving paper converting such as tail tie applications for paper towels and toilet tissue. In addition, other fluids are also applied with such equipment and include small amounts of perfume, silicone, marking fluids, etc.

Today, SPRAYMATION is primarily involved with the manufacturer and sale of adhesive dispensing equipment for the application of both cold adhesive and hot melts. SPRAYMATION no longer supplies complete automotive paint lines, but has retained many of the more critical types of equipment such as that designed to coat the inside of electrical conduit and our automatic test panels spray units. In fact, almost all automotive manufacturers and coating formulators throughout the world, have standardized on such automatic test panel units for their requirements of reproducing repeatable painted "test panels."

In addition, new applications for our COMPUSPRAY and THERMOPULSE systems continue to be investigated. The ELECTROMATIC guns, both for cold adhesives and hot melts, continue to offer advantages to users and in fact, we offer "conversion kits" which allow ELECTROMATIC guns to be used with competitive systems. The unique ELECTROMATIC gun is actuated by a built in solenoid, and therefore does not require packings or seals, as is the case with the majority of competitive air operated heads. This results also in the ELECTROMATIC gun being able to actuate faster than such guns, making it ideal for high speed applications where small repeatable amounts of material are required to be dispensed.

Currently SPRAYMATION markets its products throughout the world. In the United States there are directly employed sales personnel in many principle cities, as well as representatives and agents, who are involved with various product lines. Overseas sales, are handled by agents and distributors of much of SPRAYMATION'S product line in Europe. Other agents are located in areas such as Japan, Australia, Canada, and South America.

SPRAYMATION'S primary manufacturing center is located in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in a 48,000 square foot facility.

SPRAYMATION is continually involved with product improvement and quality control. Spraymation is registered ISO9001:2000.