About Nordson Industrial Coating Systems

The U.S. Automatic Company, parent company of Nordson Corporation, was founded in Amherst, Ohio in 1909. Initially, the company specialized in high-­volume, low-cost screw machine parts for the then emerging automotive industry. The company was reorganized in 1935 as U.S. Automatic Corporation and under the direction of Walter G. Nord, shifted its production emphasis to lower-volume, 1 1gh-precision parts that were critical in supporting the United States' defense effort during World War II.

In the years following the war, Mr. Nord, along with sons Erie and Evan, searched for a proprietary product to serve as a basis for future growth. This resulted in the acquisition of patents covering the "hot airless" method of spraying paint and other coating materials. 

The Nordson Division of U.S. Automatic Corporation was founded in 1954 to produce and market airless spray equipment. In the mid 1960s, Nordson's experience in heated coatings technology led to the development of equipment to apply thermoplastic adhesives, commonly called hot melts, for case sealing, cartoning and product assembly operations. In 1966, the entire U.S. Automatic operation was merged into the subsidiary, Nordson Corporation.

Later, the addition of air-atomized spray painting systems, and the incorporation of highly efficient electrostatics in airless, air-atomized and rotary-atomized painting processes, established Nordson as a technological leader in the paint finishing industry.

Beginning in the late 1960s, Nordson pioneered the technology and equipment for applying powder coatings with the development of the compact and efficient cartridge type recovery and recycle systems. Nordson continually refined its cartridge booth technology and is still an innovator in all aspects of the powder coating process.

From the 70's Nordson led the evolution of powder coating technology by inventing the internal voltage multiplier, a decisive development which has since become the standard across the globe. The worldwide patent has since been integrated to all our gun designs.

In the 80's Nordson invested in an acquisition of a Swedish company, ICAB, and once again directed the market with its Tribomatic® range of products that allowed complex products to be sprayed fully automatically with a high quality finish.

The company continued its growth throughout the 90's and in to the 00's, with many successful new product lines that were developed to reflect the changing requirements of customers. The metal finishing industry now required fast colour changes to spray any colour, any time. In response Nordson developed its Colormax® and Speedking® booth range, using advanced materials and innovative designs, making truly quick colour change a possibility for the first time.

With colour change time already reduced by improvements in booth technology the mid 00's witnessed the focus move back to the application of powder. lmprovements in corona spray guns meant that they could achieve the same finish as Tribo guns, and groundbreaking controls developed by Nordson refined the coating to levels of accuracy not seen before. These state of the art application controllers, named iControl and PowderPilot provided consistent and repeatable powder finishes by high levels of automation. Further pioneering developments in precision powder dispensing by Nordson led to the development of the dense phase Prodigy® family of equipment, heradling a new age of application control and efficiency.

The company's strategy for long-term growth is based on a customer-driven focus that is global in scope. Headquartered in Amherst, Ohio, Nordson Industrial Coating Systems markets its products through a network of direct operations in 32 countries throughout North America, Europe, Japan, Asia, Latin America and Australia. Consistent with this strategy, more than two thirds of the company's revenues are generated outside the United States, and the company employs over 7,000 people worldwide.

Major manufacturing, research and development facilities: Alabama, California, Georgia, Ohio,Rhode Island, China, Germany, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Worldwide operations: Direct operations and sales support offices in a total of 30 countries; working relationships with more than 165 distributor organizations expanding worldwide presence to 57 countries.

Markets served: Appliance, automotive, bookbinding, circuit board assembly, electronics, food and beverage, furniture, medical, metal finishing, nonwovens products, packaging, semiconductor, telecommunications and other diverse industries.