Overview:

Marsh Armfield is a high-end commercial furniture fabricator, with a 60,000-square-foot plant based in High Point, N.C. With 25 employees producing 200-500 cushions a day, the company’s workers are busy fabricating foam cushions for hospital, restaurant and hotel furniture, as well as private homes.

Challenge

For many years, Marsh Armfield used a solvent adhesive to bond foam. The problem was the adhesive would often dry too quickly, so operators would need to stop what they were doing and start over. If a mistake was made, they had to bring the cushion to another station and use a steamer to separate the materials.

“We tried water-based adhesives from three different companies, but they were difficult to use and took too long to dry, leading to inefficiencies,” said Matt Jones, general manager.

Additionally, they used a pressurized system to deliver the adhesive from 52-gallon drums, which also led to stopping and starting because only one worker at a time could administer the product.

Solution

For the past three months, the company has been using Chemique’s Pro Aqua water-based adhesive with its 8-gun sprayer delivery system. Pro Aqua recently receive GreenGuard Gold certification.

“By far, this system is so much better than every other system we’ve tried,” Jones said. “The spray guns are extremely light and maneuverable, allowing us to be 15 percent more efficient.”

Marsh Armfield receives the adhesive in 52-gallon drums. A pump feeds the adhesive to eight different spray guns, allowing eight different operators to apply adhesive at the same time from the same barrel.

Today, Pro Aqua makes up about 50 percent of the adhesives used at Marsh Armfield.

Jones said Pro Aqua has been especially useful for fabricating long back cushions and bench seating. “If you put a quarter-inch topper of soft foam on top of a seat cushion and pinch the edges, it would take long for it to adhere because of the force you needed to pinch the two pieces together, and in many cases, it just didn’t work. With Pro Aqua, you can adhere a long back cushion or bench seat and seam half patterns or one-third patterns with no problem.”

Jones also liked that Chemique’s Pro Aqua includes equipment, delivery, set up and tech support. Other competitors provide the product, but not the delivery system, so customers need to find a different company to build a delivery system.

“I like that Chemique sells the adhesive and the equipment and can help service the equipment if needed,” Jones said.

Pro Aqua Benefits

Chemique’s commitment to innovation and environmental awareness has resulted in a range of sprayable one and two component Pro Aqua water-based adhesives, superior in performance to existing solvented products.

The ProAqua products are ideal for foam fabrication, office seating, upholstery, bedding, transportation and other applications requiring the bonding of foams, cloth, wood, plastics and metals.