Scapa, a leading global manufacturer of bonding products and adhesive components, has become the latest company to invest in Meech’s anti-static solutions, with the installation of five Hyperion 971IPS 15KV Pulsed DC ionising bars taking place in its production environment.

From highly specialised technical adhesive solutions to standard PVC and cloth tapes, Scapa’s comprehensive array of products are used for applications in the Healthcare and Industrial markets. Headquartered in the Greater Manchester, the company has a global footprint, with 20 manufacturing and operations facilities across Europe, Asia, and both North and South America.

“At Scapa, we base our approach on a deep understanding of our core markets,” elaborates Tony Fenwick, Engineering Manager at Scapa. “We’ve developed this knowledge by working closely with leading global partners in target sectors, developing specialised adhesive tape bonding solutions for OEM’s, distributors and consumers alike. This approach allows us to anticipate tomorrow’s customer needs.”

Working in an environment where rewind rolls are featured on most of the equipment, Tony has always been aware of the potential build-up of static charges on these rolls and the challenges they could pose.

“If a static charge is generated on a machine when rewinding one coil onto another coil, it could attract dust to the substrate’s surface, or potentially cause shocks to our operators. Some our machines already had anti-static bars installed, while other rewind equipment had wire bushes as a solution for attracting static charges away from the substrate’s surface. With both quality and health and safety among our key priorities, we decided to upgrade to a more effective solution.”

Tony had already come across Meech’s static control systems during a previous engineering role, so he got in touch with the company to arrange an audit of Scapa’s equipment. From the early stages of the assessment it was clear that Meech was very experienced in the type of applications Scapa dealt with and also provided valuable expertise on how to position an anti-static bar more effectively to achieve optimum ionisation.

The audit led Scapa to buying five Hyperion 971IPS (Integrated Power Supply) 15KV bars. With default settings that enable quick and easy installation and use, the 971IPS allows users to run long range ionisation from a 24V power supply. The inclusion of Ion Current Monitoring technology allows the performance of the bar to be metered and also provides an alarm signal to advise the operator to clean the bar.

Over the course of six months, the Hyperion bars have successfully eliminated all static-related issues from Scapa’s production environment, optimising production and improving operator safety in the process.

“We’ve been very pleased with our choice,” says Tony. “We now feel that, thanks to the bars, we have achieved consistent productivity and end product quality across all of our areas.”

He concludes: “Meech have proven to be a reliable and highly valuable partner throughout this process and we look forward to a fruitful relationship in the years to come.”