Before we can purchase and use something, we need to know what it is that we might wish to use and, probably, the context in which we could be using it.double sided foam tape is no exception to this guideline. In fact, it is a bad example since the name itself has an unclear or ambiguous meaning.
* Double Sided – no problem there. This tape has two sides.
* Foam – usually, a mass of small bubbles in a liquid but the word can also describe a solidified rubber or plastic material filled with many small air (or other gas) bubbles in either open cell or, closed cell form. Bit of uncertainty creeping in since we are obviously looking at the solid foam but in what base material and what kind of bubbles?
* Tape – although tape comes in many forms and has a variety of functions, all tapes have somethings in common. Primarily that they take the form of a light, flexible, narrow strip of a base material. As such, they might be expected to be anything from around 1/8 inch to 4 inch wide by a few thousandths of an inch up to (maybe) ½ inch thick and will be supplied in a fairly long length coiled into a roll. Looking at a cross section of a piece of any tape, it will be square or rectangular in shape and the thinnest dimension will be called the sides and the wider dimensions would form the top and bottom surfaces.
It would seem that quite a lot of information has been omitted from the description – “Double Sided Foam Tape”. Therefore we have to introduce supposition and guesswork before we can decide what we are talking about and what we might wish to do with it.
* Double Sided – by this, we almost certainly mean that we want a tape that has had an additional layer laminated onto two sides and those sides will be the top and bottom of the tape. In all likelihood, the top and bottom layers will be some sort of pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA).
* Foam Tape – harder to define but foam tapes and sponges are commonly produced in materials such as Neoprene® (DuPont Trade Name) rubber and polymers from the urethane family (but, many other materials could also be the one required).
So, possibly what we want is tape made from closed cell Neoprene® foam with PSA on top and bottom. Let’s say we are going to use it on fabricated flanges on air conditioning ducts so that we stick the tape to a flange one piece of ducting and then allow the other side to stick to the flange on another piece when the two are bought into close contact.
double sided foam tape of many types can be procured from Engineered Materials Inc. Contact them online at website raise your RFQ or request them to advise about your requirements.
