Situation:

A company making emergency exit stairs was searching for ways to overall the overall costs of the stair handrails. They needed a faster and less expensive alternative to welding.

Challenges:

Even though they were able to weld the steel handrails together:

• The handrail welding process required expensive skilled labor and costly welding consumables
• Filling 100% of the welded joint and subsequent cleaning was a slow and labor-intensive process

All this extra labour and material cost made it challenging for keeping the price competitive in the market.

Solution:

On the recommendation of Henkel solution experts, the manufacturer tested LOCTITE H8000 acrylic structural bonder for bonding the stair handrails. The handrail components were placed in a jig and spot welded post which LOCTITE H8000 was dispensed onto the joint using a dual cartridge pneumatic applicator. The exposed adhesive fillet was smoothed with a gloved hand or plastic spatula to ensure proper penetration of the adhesive.

On testing it was found that LOCTITE H8000 augmented the strength of the spot-welded handrail.

Results:

Bonding with LOCTITE H8000:

• Filled the joint all in one step and strengthened the assembly
• Simplified the process reducing labor requirement
• Eliminated complete joint welds and post welding clean-up lowering overall emergency stairway costs and brought pricing in-line with the market.