Tape sticks beyond belief!

Believe it or not, there are still builders and manufacturers who would not think of using pressure-sensitive tape(PSA) to bond materials together. They would rather stick to drilling, welding, screwing, and other traditional mechanical fixing methods. To be sure materials won’t come off or come apart. Are they right? Of course not! I am convinced many industries will experience cost reduction through using PSAs, in reduced material requirements, less need for storage, and minimal investment in equipment, while producing the same or often better results! That sticks, doesn’t it?

Let me give you an example. Lately, PSAs have been increasingly used in lorries as alternatives to clips, bolts, nails, screws and rivets, and to improve the speed and ease of assembly versus use of liquid adhesives and other fixation methods. PSA tape can be used by the transportation industry to decrease weight, improve aesthetics and performance, and lower costs. Exactly the same applies to other industries like aviation, space, and automobiles. Over the past 50 years, self-adhesive tape has been keeping NASA's astronauts alive, putting airplanes back together, making race cars speedier and patching up millions of fix-it projects.

Since Dr. Horace Day, a surgeon, ‘invented’ adhesive tape for surgical use way back in 1845, new technologies have been developed and patented. Nowadays, even materials that are known to be hard to bond, such as wood, glass, foam, concrete, steel and even low surface energy plastics, can be bonded. The strength of modern PSA is, depending on the brand and type you choose, greater than the materials bonded. They will stick together, and are so tightly fixed that it will be difficult to disassemble parts without causing damage. Certain attachment options, including PSAs, however, are available that allow parts to be separated for easy service or maintenance.

Did you know even houses could soon be taped together? An electrically activated adhesive tape incorporating metal strips has been developed for constructing prefabricated homes. Typically the wooden components are nailed or stapled together and have to be rather thick in order not to split when the nails are driven in. German scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Wood Research and the Technical University Braunschweig have developed a workable and safe alternative: electrically-activated adhesive tape that consists of a thin strip of metal with adhesive on either side. As long as no electrical current is applied to the metal, the adhesive does not stick.~

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