Essentra Specialty Tapes, Forest Park, Ill., USA, has introduced several double-sided tapes, which, among other beneficial properties, will adhere well to UV coated material such as boxes, cartons, posters, P.O.P. displays, lightweight forms, easels, shelf tabs, wobblers, danglers, and many other printed materials.

Tape adhesives typically have poor or no adhesion quality when applied to UV coated material. To get around this issue, printers have had to block out or use spot coating applications to keep areas intended for the application of tapes free of UV coating. However, these "work-arounds" create additional expense for the printer and the customer. They complicate the process and can create problems that lead to defective work.

Andrew Ford, director of sales, describes a case example: "A printer for one of our customers forgot to block out areas on the customer’s UV coated cell phone cartons.  After the entire job was run, reworking the printed carton material was no longer an option, and the entire order would have had to be scrapped.  However, when the customer discovered that our unique Essentra tapes will work on these defective packages, they were able to save the production run."  Such problems are typical for many printers and assemblers of packaging or displays.

Essentra Specialty Tapes has formulated special adhesives with UV inhibitors to manufacture tapes with strong adhesion to UV coated material. Essentra designed several unique tape families using this special adhesive to accommodate varying needs. There are two families of Essentra tapes with these adhesion characteristics:

• Duraco Red. A specially modified acrylic adhesive produces a permanent and strong bond for this new versatile double-sided clear film tape. High performance Duraco Red tape was designed for hard-to-stick applications, such as UV coatings, with a strong plasticizer resistance. Its release liner and permanent tape are both transparent, allowing the user to accurately position the tape while applying it to a surface with graphics or text underneath. Once the red liner is removed, the graphics will show clearly through the remaining tape. The adhesive will not yellow. It minimizes any hazy appearance and maintains the aesthetic value and readability of the underlying graphics or text. And, Duraco Red is ideally suited for use with UV coated material. It is available in pre-cut pieces on a roll, varying from 1,000 to 7,500 pieces per roll. Duraco Red is also available in continuous standard rolls of 180 ft. and continuous long rolls of 750 ft., the longest rolls available in the industry.
•  2811 Tissue Tape. A specially modified hot melt rubber-based adhesive creates a high performance adhesion that is characteristic of this family of tissue tapes, and is ideally suited for application on difficult surfaces and materials that are lightweight. 2811 Tissue Tapes are also user-friendly "finger-lift" tapes, which feature a release liner with a dry edge on both sides that extends beyond the width of the adhesive strip. The extra width (dry edge) allows the liner to be removed more quickly and easily, compared with flush-edge liners, where the liner and adhesive are the same width. 2811 Tissue Tapes are available in short rolls of 216 ft. or standard rolls of 2,000 ft. The continuous rolls can be used with automated inline production equipment.

For any printer or assembler using UV coated paper or paperboard, these tape products are ideal solutions to the routine problems associated with these hard-to-stick surfaces. No other specialty tape manufacturer provides as many solutions for this application as Essentra Specialty Tapes.

More information about each specialty tape is available online: Duraco Red and 2811 Tissue Tape. Free tape samples can be ordered from the part number tables for each tape family.