Archive: Jun 2020

A Guide on Custom Adhesive Tapes

Whether used to seal packages, mark safety hazards, or patch damaged boats, adhesive tape is critical to many industrial functions. While standard adhesive tapes are highly versatile, with material options suited to almost any application, custom tapes offer manifold benefits for companies with specific needs. For instance, custom-printed tape is an affordable way to differentiate a brand’s packaging or to label equipment with important precautions. Custom tapes can also accommodate more specialized features such as anti-slip texturing or antimicrobial coatings.

At NADCO, we specialize in single-source solutions for custom adhesive tapes of all kinds. With our comprehensive prototyping, printing, and die-cutting services, we fulfill challenging custom tape orders in-house and to precise specifications. 

In this guide, we outline some of the primary capabilities of custom tapes, including their composition and applications. However, if you have specific questions about your requirements, the adhesive experts at NADCO would be happy to guide you. 

Common Types of Custom Adhesive Tapes

Custom adhesive tapes are varied to suit their diverse applications. A range of materials are available, from simple paper to sturdy vinyl, with options to suit diverse functional and aesthetic requirements. Some of the most common types of custom adhesive tape include the following:

• Paper Tapes: Paper tapes are among the most common and the most versatile, varyingly used for sealing, marking, labeling, and masking. Their popularity comes from their low cost combined with their ease of customization. Most paper tapes are easy to print on, with options for both matte and glossy finishes. Similarly, in terms of function, different papers enable varying degrees of strength, removability, and temperature resistance, so paper tapes can conform to diverse application requirements. 
• Foil Tapes: Foil tapes are durable adhesives that can withstand exposure to harsh outdoor or industrial environments. The most common types of foil tape combine aluminum or copper foil (which may be either conductive or non-conductive) with a flexible adhesive backing. More specialized applications may call instead for lead or stainless steel foil. As a category, foil tapes tend to offer superior strength while conforming to irregular surfaces, making them an ideal choice for shielding or sealing electronics.
• Mylar Tapes: Mylar tapes are typically used for challenging surfaces such as heavy-duty industrial equipment. In such settings, mylar tape provides a strong seal with the dimensional stability to withstand vibrations, temperature fluctuations, and other stresses. In addition to their excellent performance characteristics, our mylar tapes use a brushed silver polyester to create a smooth, attractive finish that complements equipment bodies.
• Vinyl Tapes: Vinyl tapes are a common choice for labeling and striping, as well as for various OSHA applications. These tapes are available in vibrant colors for high visibility, with options for custom graphics and instructions when required. Functionally, vinyl tapes resist heat, corrosion, and bacteria, so they have the lasting power needed for critical safety applications.

Within these categories, NADCO offers further customization options regarding material and finish. Our adhesives team can walk you through these options to ensure your product is exactly right for you.

Key Applications of Custom Adhesive Tapes

Although adhesive tapes are often thought of as packaging materials, custom tapes find applications across manufacturing, medicine, retail, and other industries. By choosing a custom tape, industry professionals can achieve the precise combination of mechanical, chemical, and aesthetic characteristics that will suit their application. Some applications that benefit from custom tapes include:

• Labeling workplace hazards for an organized and OSHA-compliant environment
• Marking floors for proper social distancing
• Sealing and decorating packages with custom graphics
• Applying instructions to equipment or fragile packages
• Gently securing medical devices to sensitive skin

Simple adjustments to tape material and design make it easy and affordable to create solutions tailored to any of these applications. 

Custom Adhesive Tape Benefits and Features

Although a carefully selected stock tape will serve most applications well, nothing compares to the utility of a completely customized solution. Some benefits of custom tapes over other options include:

• Opportunities to Distinguish Your Brand: Using custom tapes to seal packages is an economical way to set packaging apart and differentiate your brand from the competition. Paper tapes, in particular, allow marketers to attach high-fidelity logos and graphics that draw the eye and capture your brand image. 
• Informative Text and Graphics: Custom tapes can bear exactly the message you need, whether it be transportation instructions for a package or information about traffic flow through a socially distanced facility. Custom adhesives are the only way to combine your exact message with the right tape medium for your application.
• Unbeatable Safety Features: Whether your application calls for tamper-resistance, anti-slip textures, or FDA-compliant composition, custom tapes ensure uncompromising performance in your specific setting. Also, when processing custom orders, batch numbers allow for traceability in sensitive medical or food-related applications, and custom graphics make it easy to distinguish genuine products from fakes.
• Maximum Convenience: Custom tapes reduce the need to trim or write on adhesives, saving time in facilities that use tape in repetitive applications.

These advantages give custom adhesives the edge in both cost and convenience, ensuring maximum ROI for clients with unique specifications.

NADCO’s Custom Adhesive Tape Capabilities

At NADCO, we’ve spent almost 30 years crafting industry-leading labels and adhesive tapes, offering tapes up to 20″ wide and clear prints with 4-color process or up to 7 spot colors. Drawing on our extensive in-house capabilities, we tailor our tapes to clients’ specific needs. Our custom tape process considers all facets of our client’s needs, including:

• Surface material and texture
• Tape color and opacity
• Environmental and chemical exposures
• Tension and frictional force
• Tape size and quantity 

Whether you’re seeking printed or non-printed tape made from paper, vinyl, or foil, NADCO can help.

Get Started on Your Custom Tape Solution With NADCO

When you need a custom adhesive tape, it’s critical to choose a provider who can handle your needs with minimal outsourcing or delays. NADCO’s expert design and in-house manufacturing guarantee that you will receive timely and high-quality services at every stage of the development process. To learn more about how our custom tape offerings can save you time and money, contact our team today.

The Importance of Reflective Tapes for Visibility and Safety Control

You probably see marking or reflective tapes used throughout your facility and don’t give it much thought. After all, you already know there’s a step-down here or a potentially dangerous piece of equipment there, so it might seem like the tape isn’t doing much help to you. However, it plays an incredibly important role in the workplace.

Marking tape is applied to facility surfaces for a variety of purposes, including drawing attention to a hazard, identifying uneven surfaces or low clearances, marking boundaries and pathways, outlining emergency exit plans, and more. It often has reflective properties, which make it stand out from surrounding surfaces, so facility workers and visitors notice it and the information it is conveying.

Types of Reflective Tapes

There are many types of reflective tape available, each of which varies with regard to brightness and other features to suit different applications. For example:

• Engineer-grade reflective tape. This high-quality, high-gloss tape is made from an enclosed lens retro reflective material. It is pressure-sensitive, adhering to various flat surfaces. While it was originally designed for use on vehicles to improve visibility during nighttime driving, it is also used on road signs.
• High-intensity reflective tape. This high-quality, high-gloss tape is made from microprismatic retro reflective material. It is highly durable, withstanding temperatures between -40° F to 180° F. It is typically good for a decade before it needs to be replaced due to wear and tear.

Common Applications for Reflective Tape

Reflective tape can be used in many different applications, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Sewing reflective tape to the outside of a jacket, pants, or shirt can increase your visibility while working or walking in high-traffic or low-light areas.
• Vehicles, trailers, bikes, and motorcycles. These pieces of equipment generally already have reflectors. However, many people add reflective tape to the back or sides of them for extra visibility.
• Objects near driveways and in parking lots. Handrails, low fences, and other barriers can be difficult to notice, especially if you’re in an unfamiliar parking lot or driveway. Reflective tape can highlight these objects as you navigate a narrow parking lot or a curved driveway.
• Reflective tape can protect your mailbox from being hit by unaware drivers or bicyclists, especially if it is close to the road or partially or completely hidden.
• Boats and ships. Reflective tape on the deck and the outside of the craft can help passengers and other boats avoid accidents involving out-jutting parts and protruding edges.

Why Should You Use Reflective Tape in the Workplace?

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other government agencies require industrial and commercial facilities to mark floors and other potentially hazardous locations with tape to prevent workplace injury. The tape markings inform facility employees and visitors of dangers they may encounter within the facility and how to avoid them, which can result in improved workplace safety.

Other purposes of reflective safety tapes in workplaces include:

• Guiding the flow of traffic within the facility
• Highlighting pathways to entrances/exits when the power is out
• Increasing worker visibility with patches on clothing and PPE

Partner With NADCO for Your Reflective Tape Needs Today

Reflective tapes are essential to ensuring safety and visibility in the workplace. Want to learn more about this product? Ask the experts at NADCO. Equipped with nearly 30 years of experience supplying tapes and other adhesive products, we can answer and address almost any question or concern you may have. If you’re looking to partner with us for your reflective tape needs, request a quote.