Dispensing, as an automated manufacturing process, has become more and more popular and common in automotive, electronics, medical devices, aerospace, packaging and many other industries. The materials dispensed can serve a wide range of purposes such as structural joining, corrosion resistance, seal, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) reduction, part protection, durability enhancement, thermal dissipation, and bonding.
In a mass production environment, a desired well-controlled dispensing process is supposed to produce the right amount of “glue” at the right location on parts in a consistent way with minimum production downtime. However, if a candid conversation can be engaged with experienced members of the manufacturing community, it will show that the reality has long been quite a deviation from this beautiful desire of well-controlled beads. There are many reasons for this, but fundamentally dispensing is, relatively speaking, a new manufacturing process, and there has not been a widespread wealth of experience and knowledge shared across the industry to deal with many inherent variations.