The structure of an adhesive tape
The “standard” adhesive tape doesn’t exist anymore: maybe it never existed at all, but now even more, because it depends by its uses.
On the market there are some typologies of adhesive tape that are more common, that you can easily find in the supermarkets or in the hardware store and you usually call “the brown tape”, “the usual tape” or “the tape for packaging”.
Instead, if you need an adhesive tape with some specific characteristic (high resistance, high adherence, high resistance to the heat) then you have to pay attention to the typology of adhesive tape: there are some adhesive tapes with specific technical characteristics commonly called “special” or “technical” tapes and they satisfy very peculiar needs.
How an adhesive tape is made?
To make it clear, it is absolutely necessary explain how an adhesive tape is made:
- The relaese: an anti-adhesive layer that allows the adhesive tape to unroll easily
- The support: it is spread with the adhesive on the layer, and it is the part that causes the traction and the extension.
- The adhesive: it can be of different formulations depending on its proprieties of share and adhesion are essential for the tape’s performances.
Among all these characteristics, we can say that the “nucleus” of the adhesive tape is represented by its support that it can be made of paper or other plastic films.
The density of the coating and the adhesive’s formulation depends on the uses for which the adhesive tape is made.
The support: the different materials
To simplify, we can say that the support’s materials are seven, each one with its characteristics:
- paper
- plastic
- canvas
- non-woven fabric
- metal
- rubber
- mixed materials
In this macro list are included all the typologies of mono-adhesive tape, both for packaging and technical uses.
