Useful Tips

Who invented the scotch tape - how scotch tape is made

In 1923, 3M laboratory technician Richard Drew tested new samples of sandpaper in an auto shop. Distracted from sanding, he noticed a blatant disgrace. Carrying out two-tone painting of the body, the painters could not achieve an even border between the colors. Newspapers were molded onto the painted parts with paste, homemade glue and medical plaster, but they did not hold well.

Drew took over the development of adhesive tape for auto painters. Two years of experimentation - and in 1925 he presented Masking Tape. It adhered tightly and easily peeled off without damaging the paint.

But the usual trouble happened: the management "stabbed" the budget. I had to apply glue only along the edges of the tape, which made it wrinkle, slide out and did not make life easier for the painters at all. Legend has it that one of them said, "Go to your Scottish bosses and ask them to add some glue to this Scottish tape!" At that time, the Scots were a symbol of stinginess, and probably from here the image of Scrooge McDuck was born. Glue was added to the tape, but the name scotch tape stuck. Drew's bosses had a good sense of humor.

How scotch tape is made today

While developing the prototype glue, Richard Drew's team experimented with vegetable oils, resins, gums, glycerin glue. The final formulation was based on premium wood glue with glycerin and applied to a paper backing.

In modern production, polypropylene is used as the basis for packaging tape. It is durable and tough, does not allow water and odors to pass through, is resistant to high and low temperatures, repeated bending, is suitable for metallization and printing, and is environmentally friendly. Other types of adhesive tape (masking, double-sided, reinforced, aluminum, metallized) are made on a paper basis, foil and PVC. The adhesive coating is acrylic or rubber glue.

Production stages:

  1. The polypropylene film is fed onto the conveyor from huge rollers. A solvent enters the canvas so that the film does not stick together ahead of time.
  2. Hot glue is applied to one side of the canvas. It must be constantly hot, therefore it is stored in a preheated container at a temperature of 200 ° C.
  3. The web is fed onto a cooling roller, which hardens the glue.
  4. The rewinder winds the tape on a 1.5 meter reel. The length of the tape on one reel is 8500 meters!
  5. From the spools, the tape is fed to a row of blades that cut it into several strips of a given width. Each strip is wound on a cardboard base and sealed.
  6. One copy from each reel is tested by rolling a metal ball on the sticky side of the tape. It is launched from a certain height and the distance after which it stopped is measured. For each type of adhesive tape, this distance must comply with certain standards.

Watch the video on how to compactly store scotch tape

$config[zx-auto] not found$config[zx-overlay] not found