A rail customer had quality, efficiency and health & safety issues with a competitor product. Read more about how Henkel helped to solve this.

The customer’s electric motors for industrial applications were experiencing premature failures, resulting in warranty claims.

Customer Challenge
The customer’s new AC/DC power supply for Cloud and Hyperscale Data Centers required a robust thermal management solution for its compact design. 

Customer Challenge

• Modern-day motor drives are integrating more complex power devices to manage growing energy efficiency requirements.  The customer’s next-generation motor controller required a thermal interface material (TIM) to manage new performance challenges and higher power densities. 
• As the IC power module is subjected to motor vibration, reliability and stability of the thermal interface material – with no material migration -- is critical to enable operational integrity.
• Any thermal material selected had to meet challenging metrics: Electrical isolation with high dielectric strength (>5000 Volts) and low thermal resistance are necessary to meet in-application conditions.

Customer Challenges
Increased production demand for the customer’s low-voltage power distribution enclosure systems dictated a faster, more efficient gasketing approach. 

Customer Challenge

• The customer’s new design for a DC-DC power converter required a more efficient, high-volume solution for the application of thermal management materials. 
  
  
• For previous-generation designs, silicone pads were applied in several locations between the DC-DC converter’s printed circuit board and metal housing. Use of the pads presented several inventory and production-related issues, including:
  
  - Operator handling difficulty of the thin sheets
  - Manual and time-consuming application process
  - Sourcing of silicone pads in many different sizes and thicknesses
  
  
• Any new material solution had to provide similar or better thermal performance as that achieved with the silicone pads. 

Customer Challenge

• The customer’s new design for a power supply used in a high-power industrial application incorporates several discrete packages, making traditional mechanical attachment processes inefficient.
• In addition, the system’s power levels, high breakdown voltage and heat generation suggested that use of conventional adhesives as a mechanical replacement could not deliver the thermal performance necessary. 
• The customer aimed to reduce overall manufacturing costs, while improving production efficiency, performance and yield. 

Customer Challenges

• A new Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) design required a robust thermal management solution with no outgassing risk.
• As the system can be used in a variety of machines and production environments, the thermal materials must be conducive to many conditions.
• The customer requested the use of a silicone-free thermal solution to avoid silicone contamination, but wanted to maintain the stress control and heat benefits generally consistent with silicone-based thermal interface materials (TIMs) based thermal interface materials (TIMs).