How to Improve Your Engineered Wood and Mass Timber Process Efficiency

Learn how Bostik's expert technical support team helps engineered wood and mass timber manufacturers improve production efficiencies, offering expertise such as identifying improvement areas, optimizing adhesive performance and enhancing overall throughput.

In engineered wood and mass timber industries, manufacturers like you want to increase overall production efficiencies. However, this can be hard to do while also focusing on manufacturing quality products that meet industry standards.

Fortunately, Bostik experts are here to help.

In this Spotlight Q&A with Tom Stewart, Bostik’s Regional Business Director for Building Components, you can learn about the value of our expertise and how we – and our adhesives – can help manufacturers achieve efficiency goals.

Q: How, in your opinion, can engineered wood and mass timber manufacturers increase production efficiencies, and how does Bostik help?

A: Based on our discussions with manufacturers, our experts have learned that manufacturers may be interested in:

Optimizing their material usage and equipment to proactively avoid inefficiency issues
Troubleshooting their materials and equipment effectively should any problems arise

This is where Bostik’s technical support team can make a positive difference. We prioritize meeting with manufacturers, listening to their pain points and needs, working with them on ways to improve their techniques and streamline processes going forward. Some of this support includes:

Improving adhesive mixing issues
Identifying process bottlenecks and their cause
Optimizing adhesive application rates

Our Bostik experts want to do more than provide a quality product; we want to help ensure your materials and equipment are set up to help you accomplish your efficiency goals.

Q: How can the adhesive formulation impact production efficiencies, and how can Bostik help?

A: Adhesives are formulated with certain working, or open times, which is the amount of time the product can be assembled while the adhesive is viable. Adhesives then require time to cure before achieving full bond strength. When using an engineered wood or mass timber adhesive, it’s important that it offers sufficient working time so that the manufacturers can properly assemble the application. However, it’s not efficient to wait a long time for the adhesive to cure before the product is ready, as this can cause inefficiencies.

Therefore, our experts have prioritized formulating adhesives with optimized working and cure time ratios to give manufacturers as long of a working time as needed to assemble the product, then as short of a cure time as possible to keep production moving. We can also customize adhesive formulations to be tailored for specific working time and still reflect a low associated cure time.

Q: How does Bostik help engineered wood and mass timber manufacturers if there is an issue on their production lines that impacts efficiency?

A: As much as we work to prevent it, our experts understand that unexpected downtime can occur. In those cases, we visit onsite to meet with a customer directly and assess the situation.

In addition to dedicated support, we also build leniency into our product recommendations to proactively try to mitigate the efficiency impact. For example, we understand that when a line is stopped, it can cause the adhesive to be no longer viable if the downtime extends past the adhesive’s working time; if this occurs, then the impact to efficiency is greater than if the product were still viable. This is because now the product and associated materials must be discarded and the manufacturing process started all over again.

This is why we often recommend products to have slightly longer working times than what may be needed; for example, if the manufacturer may have 10 minutes of downtime, we recommend they use an adhesive solution that offers 12 minutes of working time. This gives them more flexibility to account for any issues before having to make replacements, helping to reduce overall material waste and efficiency impact.

Q: How can manufacturers get started working with Bostik's Technical Services team to address engineered wood and mass timber production efficiency needs, and what is the process like?

A: It’s easy to get started with our team; if a manufacturer shares their interest through our website, we will put them in contact with one of our Bostik representatives. After an initial discussion to understand the manufacturer’s specific needs and how we can address any issues, we’ll connect the customer with our technical support team. They will conduct testing with the customer’s materials to help ensure we choose a solution with suitable performance and processing capabilities for their needs. This will include testing for various temperature and moisture conditions in the lab and their facility. We’ll also visit their facility to help with line optimizations and check in periodically to make sure things continue to operate efficiently; even when a customer is up and running, we’re still here as a resource whenever they need.

The Value of Bostik’s Engineered Wood and Mass Timber Adhesives

As the adhesive solutions segment of Arkema, Bostik formulates high-performing, ISOSET™ structural adhesives that can help you achieve efficient, cost-effective manufacturing processing for wooden I-joists, finger joints, cross-laminated timber and glulam products. This includes customized assembly open times to enable reduced cure times for high-volume production.

Bostik's ISOSET™ adhesive portfolio includes one-component moisture cure technology, two-component, emulsion polymer isocyanate technology and a two-part system based on 100% reactive polyurethane technology. Bostik's engineered wood and mass timber products meet the following requirements:

For engineered wood products, ISOSET™ has passed stringent fire testing including self-insulating tests. For example, it maintains performance during ANSI-405 burn tests under practical load conditions. ISOSET meets the building code requirements such as ASTM D2559, D7247, and CSA O112.10 for products used with finger joints, i-joists and LVL. It has also met the burn test requirements set forth in ANSI405.
For mass timber products, ISOSET™ meets North American industry code and burn requirements such as PRG320*, ANSI A190.1 and CSA O122 standards.

Are you ready to work with a supplier who can provide the technical support you need? Contact a Bostik expert to learn how our team can help address your performance and processing requirements for engineered wood and mass timber products.