Few people realize just how essential hot melt adhesives are to the manufacturing industry. Suffice it to say, you would not have a plethora of manufactured products that you use on a daily basis without hot melt adhesives. In fact, almost anything you can think of is created with the help of adhesives in some way.
Here are 10 manufactured products that you may not have realized are assembled with the help of hot melt adhesive.
Mattresses
Hot melt adhesives are used to hold together various layers of foam and insulation within a mattress that help make them thick and comfortable. Any kind of pillow-top or fabric on top of the mattress is also fastened using adhesive.
Car Interiors
You can point to any part of a car’s interior and know that part is likely held in place by hot melt adhesive. Everything from the dashboard to the seats to the mirrors will typically be bonded to the car with hot adhesives. Rest assured, the adhesives used during car production are as strong as can be, helping to keep you safe.
Peel-and-Stick Carpet Tiles
If you’ve ever installed carpet tiles, you’ve done so with the help of hot melt adhesives. Of course, if you didn’t physically install it yourself, you’d never know because of how effective the adhesives work. No matter the type of floor, indoors or outdoors, peel-and-stick carpet tiles stay in place because of strong adhesives.
Shoes
You definitely don’t think about your shoes as needing adhesives. However, almost every part of shoe manufacturing requires some type of adhesive. Think about the sole of the shoe, for example. Without a strong adhesive to keep the sole in place, taking your shoes on and off would be quite the hassle.
Credit Cards
If you’ve ever received a credit card in the mail attached to a piece of paper, you’ve personally experienced a special type of adhesive commonly known as “fugitive” glue. This substance keeps the credit card in place during transit and then dissolves once you peel your new credit card off the paper.
Furniture Assembly
Much like with cars, hot melt adhesives play an important role when manufacturing furniture to ensure it’s safe for users. With wooden furniture, in particular, edge bonding is important for creating a sturdy piece of furniture, something that is possible and easy to do with today’s strong adhesives.
Books
For those of you who still read actual books instead of e-books, good for you. Also, you should know that hot melt adhesives play an important role in putting those books together. Spine glue is the obvious example; without it, pages would become detached from the book and lost forever. However, adhesives are also used on the first and last pages of the book to help keep everything bound together.
Food Packaging
At some point in its life, the food we eat is packaged into a box, and if that box isn’t properly fastened, the shelf life of the food suffers. That’s when hot melt adhesives come in handy to help seal food packages and stand up to moisture and other elements that may threaten the integrity of our food.
Shipping Boxes
Much like our food packaging, shipping boxes need to be sealed tight and remain strong. Before anything is placed in a shipping box, the box itself is manufactured with strong adhesives so that it can carry heavy objects and stand up to a sometimes turbulent shipping process without breaking.
Garage Doors
This is another object that may surprise some people. However, hot melt adhesives play an important role in helping to make garage doors stronger. Adhesives help to make garage doors more resilient to extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, as these doors are always up against the elements. Adhesives also help to install any windows that are part of the garage door.
