When Tape Doesn’t Work.

Tape Doesn't Work?

Yes, you're right. For past 6 months or so, the whole point of this newsletter has been to explain how "Tapeworks." Well, we wanted to break from that a little bit this month and talk about a situation where tape did not work.

Late last century a new process was developed to coat parts with metal and ceramic materials. The process is called plasma spraying or thermal spraying. The process eventually evolved into HVOF (High Velocity Oxy Fuel) coating.

Several high temperature tapes were made to assist in the process. The job of those tapes was to mask areas of the product that were not to be coated. Those special tapes were made with substrates of glass cloth, aluminum foil laminated to glass cloth, and silicone rubber-coated glass cloth, all with a silicone adhesive. However, the "high velocity" part of the new HVOF process involved blasting the atomized coating particles at twice the speed of sound. Unfortunately, the tapes in use could not take the force of the spray – they just blew off or were eroded away.

Back to the Drawing Board

Many tape manufacturers, including Tapeworks, tried to resolve this. We made the substrates thicker by laminating different combinations of the various tapes together, hoping it would allow them to withstand the process. None of those attempts proved successful. The tape didn't work.

At that point, Tapeworks decided a different approach was needed. Working with a silicone rubber manufacturer, we developed a masking compound which, when cured with heat, can withstand the HVOF process. We named that tape MACHBLOC® and introduced it to the market in 1995. We have been providing the product for masking parts to be HVOF sprayed ever since. In fact, we ship MACHBLOC® all over the world today.

Most of you don't do any plasma spraying. And in this case tape didn't work. But we thought you may like to know that even when the tape didn't work, Tapeworks did! We solved a problem. That is why our whole name is Tapeworks – Engineered Tape Solutions.

PRO TIP:

When you have a highly specialized tape application, we can find a solution to your challenges because we're Tapeworks – Engineered Tape Solutions.