Elevator manufacturing and new structural bonding opportunities

While each industrial manufacturing sector faces its own unique design challenges, they also share basic goals of efficiency, safety and adherence to standards. There is often enough common ground in processes, materials and methods for innovation to be transferable.

The reach of Henry T Ford’s innovations extended far beyond automobile manufacture as other sectors took them on and applied them to their specific needs.

This blog explores how innovative structural bonding solutions in areas like truck and airplane manufacture offer new opportunities to deliver efficiencies in elevator manufacturing. Advances in adhesives and applicators along with the emergence of new materials open up opportunities to improve elevator performance and optimize cost.

What do trains, planes, automobiles and elevators have in common…?

Elevators, trains, planes and automobiles have at least one thing in common, in that all are containers for moving people or cargo.

They also share design objectives. They need to be safe, compliant with regulations, efficient, durable, cost-effective, as simple as possible to manufacture and maintain and, now, environmentally sustainable.

For most of their history, their manufacturing methods and materials have overlapped too, being primarily about riveting, bolting, welding or sometimes taping steel or aluminum components.

This is starting to change as technological advances open up new options for metal bonding, new materials and manufacturing methods.

Adhesives for robust and durable metal bonding have been available for some time. Composites are increasingly replacing metals in aerospace to meet the demand for lighter, more fuel-efficient airplanes, and the automobile industry is starting to follow the same trend. Global Market Insights anticipated a 7.3% compound annual growth rate in the aerospace composites market from 2021 thru 2027, and 6.9% in the automobile industry.

This move towards composites is just one of the factors driving parallel growth in structural bonding materials and techniques.

Adhesive use has moved far beyond the messy and uncontrolled process of squeezing a tube of glue to do a home repair, to a position where sophisticated industrial processes rely on it, from airframes to cell phones, wind turbine blades and automotive components.

….and how are they different?

Design considerations for elevators, planes, trains and automobiles start to diverge beyond the base level principles of safety, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, because each of these products has a different function and operates in different environments.

Reducing weight has become a key driver in airplane design, while for elevator manufacturing, factors like passenger comfort and air noise are key.

Most governments have safety regulations for elevator performance as they do for trains, planes and automobiles. The emphasis differs between sectors because of their different operating environments; elevator safety has a strong interdependency with building fire codes that the other sectors don’t.

How structural bonding creates new options for elevator design

Understanding what adhesive technology can do now is a critical first step in opening up the options it offers to elevator manufacturing.

Adhesive advantages

Concerns over strength and durability can be a barrier to adopting structural bonding. The growth in structural bonding in aerospace, automotive, and other manufacturing sectors shows how adhesives now offer the required strength and durability, as well as many other advantages.

Strength - Using fasteners, rivets or welds creates concentration sites when stress is applied, and failures occur where stress is concentrated. Bonded joints distribute stress over the entire joint area, and have proved very effective in aircraft and train manufacture.

Aesthetics - Adhesives are ideally suited for joining dissimilar materials, enabling improved aesthetics and greater use of composite materials. They can transform what were purely functional components into significant design elements. For example, windshields are a key structural component of cars, and improvements in bonding have had a significant impact on crash test performance, while the humble headlamp, previously a purely functional device, has been transformed into an integral design element by new materials and high-performance adhesives.

Sound deadening - Because an adhesive bond creates a resilient structural plastic between the full interface of bonded components, it inherently reduces the number of factors that can increase noise.

Beyond the Bond – How adhesives can simplify and reduce manufacturing costs.

Structural bonding offers versatility, speed and automation that can simplify and reduce costs in manufacturing and installation.

Adding an adhesive to stock replaces a variety of fastener or rivet lengths, widths, materials and coatings, because that one adhesive can be dispensed on any part configuration across multiple substrates and materials.

Laying down an adhesive bead and joining two parts is significantly faster than installing multiple mechanical fasteners, doing multiple spot welds or a long weld bead.

Bonding can be fully or semi-automated at relatively low cost and calls for general laborers rather than the skilled and certified labor required for manual welding. This is useful to know in an environment of labor shortages.

Benefits of partnering with an adhesive expert

Adhesive technology is not yet taught widely in Engineering courses, and it is natural for Engineers to solve problems with the tools they are most comfortable with.

Partnering with a global adhesive specialist can go far beyond provision of adhesives and delivery mechanisms. A partner with experience in all aspects of structural bonding can bring specialized expertise and new problem-solving skills to the team, and support the process in areas such as adherence to standards and continual process improvement.

What next?

Here at Henkel, we aim to create effective collaboration from design through to manufacturing, and our engagement with designers in the sectors where we operate is a key element of what we do.

To continue the conversation on the options that structural bonding can offer elevator design:

Request a Free Consultation

About the Author

Doug Lescarbeau is North America Industrial Market Development Manager for Loctite brand products at Henkel Corporation. Doug works with Design and Manufacturing Engineers in target markets to identify where adhesives and sealants currently add value and challenges where they could add value. Doug has 40 years of industrial adhesive experience in technical, marketing, strategy, and sales roles. He has a B.S. in Chemistry and an MBA.

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