Duct tape solves just about any job ( for a small while , at least ) . Busted truck bumper , crock up trash cans , an endless leaning of other house fracture — if two thing are well off sting together , duct taping is the answer . But how did we come up with this miracle on a spool ? And what piss one product so good at so much rest home improvement ?
Duct Tape’s War Story
Richard Drew , a 3 K engineer working in St. Paul MN , is credited with cook up adhesive tape . While testing 3 M ’s new “ Wetordry ” stain emery paper at a local car body shop in 1923 , Drew noticed that workers there were having a hell of a clip achieving sharp , clean lines on their two - tone blusher jobs . His resolution — Scotch Brand Cellulose Tape , the world ’s first adhesive - backed masking tape — debut five years later and made 3 one thousand a household name .
tight forward to the 1940s , with America campaign in WWII . As part of the domesticated warfare effort , Johnson and Johnson ’s Permacell class devised and perfected a military - grade adhesive tape to seal ammo boxes against wet during transport . Permacell researcher line up a means to insert fine - mesh duck fabric between the Scotch magnetic tape ’s polyethelene financial support and gumshoe - based adhesive . This make a inviolable , durable mag tape that repelled water like a duck ’s feathers — with that power , and the duck’s egg material structure , it had to be holler “ Duck Tape . ”
Servicemen quickly found uses for this versatile material beyond just preserve ammunition ironic . They slap duck’s egg tape on everything from tents to Jeeps as a ready , irregular fix . Air Force flight crew even cover their aircraft ’s gun ports with the material to cut down on puff during burlesque .
At the end of the war , maker supervene upon the Army Green financial backing with the now - familiar silver , and marketed it as a localisation - all solution for revive leaks in a home ’s forced - gentle wind warming system . Thus , duck’s egg tape became duct tape .
What It’s Made Of
Duct tape is still made much in the same way it was in the Permacell labs . A cotton interlocking constitutes the tape ’s core , give it strength as it ’s stretched , along with an power to be shoot down along its length or breadth . A mingy weave allot greater tear resistance , and different grades of duct tape are ascertain by the case of cotton engagement . Military ground level tape measure , for representative , has a tear military rating of 40 Pound , while most consumer tapes are rated to only half that . The outer polythene coating protects the interlocking from wet and grinding while remaining elastic enough to allow the tape to stick to irregular surfaces . The adhesive material is formulated with natural rubber compounds to provide substantial farsighted - term adherence .
The process of really making canal mag tape get with the adhesive material . Large occlusion of the raw India rubber base are first broken down and flux with shot of charge plate rosin ( which add the gumminess that natural rubber want ) within aBanbury social . These industrial mixers use a duad of rotate spiral - shaped blades to work on the pencil eraser and resin mixing to the body of pizza pie dough . This chemical compound is then feed into a sigma kneader , which heats and further litigate the rubber / rosin mixture . From there , the polyethene and fabric layer are at the same time fed into a countering whole . That applies a generous bed of the adhesive through the cloth and onto the poly cinema , stick everything toghter . From there , the individual expectant pealing of mag tape is unwrapped , slice to duration , and then rerolled , packaged and transport .
How It Works
Duct tape relies on what ’s known as a pressure - sore adhesive ( PSA ) for its implicit in stickiness . PSAs are soft polymer blending that exploitvan der Waals forcesto join two object together . The strong point of the bond is due to the fact that the adhesive is hard enough and its viscoelastic property are powerful enough to resist flow when stressed . This is not the same as the mechanism of structural adhesive like , say , Elmer ’s glue . Those adhesvies demand the vapor of a dissolver to make the chemical hamper .
“ Other adhesives , like gum and epoxies , are swimming when you apply them , but they respond chemically and harden , ” says Costantino Creton , a fabric scientist at the School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry in Paris . “ PSAs have no chemical reaction . They do n’t change at all . They are in the whole State Department when you apply them , and they mystify in their solid state . ”
That is , of course , until the adhesive stops sticking . But when that problem arises , and the canal tape peels spare , you already have just the matter to desexualise it .
[ Made How – Duck Brand Duct Tape – eHow – ACS – Wikipedia – Image : Ronald Sumners / Shutterstock ]
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