Industry About tesa Sustainability Career Press & Insights
Innovative Solution for Consumer Electronics

Splicing of siliconized materials made easy

Technologies

Our new tesa® 4200 ensures reliable and efficient splicing of high slip materials, especially for the release liner industry.

The Release Liner Industry


Simply put, release liners can be defined as coated papers or films carrying sticky materials. But usually, nothing is as simple as it seems. An adhesive’s usual purpose is "to stick", but at the same time it should easily be released from the liner material used as an adhesive protection layer. And this requires perfect alignment of parameters such as base material, silicone technology, or coating thickness.


Nowadays, release liners can be found in a vast variety of industries, for example in medical, label, graphics, composites, chemical,  electronics, or hygiene sectors; application areas reaching from drinking bottles to medical plasters to holding mobile phones together. Of course, release liners also play an especially important role when producing self-adhesive tapes which makes the application and a well-performing splicing product interesting to us in more than one way.

Despite of market challenges such as scarcity of raw materials or price pressure, the release liner industry faces growth opportunities across the world. Being confronted with the increasing trend towards sustainability, an important development is the rising use of synthetic, film based materials consisting of polypropylene, polyester and polyethylene instead of paper. Those very thin liners do not only involve significantly lower waste and can be produced more efficiently, but they also simplify transportation and storage. At the same time however, changes in materials can be challenging when it comes to secure splicing processes.

Film materials
Film materials
tesa® 4200
tesa® 4200

New tesa® 4200

With our new tesa® 4200, we support splicing processes of state-of-the-art release liner materials. The product is a thin, double-sided tape for flying splice, flying core starting as well as static splice applications of siliconized materials. Its major value of very strong adhesion to silicone surfaces leads to a secure splice performance and makes cost-intensive production downtimes a thing of the past. The tape's thin polyester backing ensures excellent conformability and its red color facilitates optical detection to easily remove spliced areas later during production. Another main feature is the tape’s chemical and high temperature resistance which allows its use in a wide variety of applications. Altogether, these features ensure reliable splicing of siliconized materials and increase process efficiency in a substantial manner.

 

Features and Benefits of tesa® 4200

Tape Feature Process Benefit
Strong adhesion Secure splice performance
Thin backing film Excellent conformability
Red color Optical detection possible
Chemical and temperature resistance Reliable use in a variety of applications

Application


Everyone knows that a solution’s highest efficiency cannot be achieved when its implementation is complicated or unclear. With the development of tesa® 4200, we did not only focus on achieving maximum product performance but also on facilitating the user-friendliest application.

Within the flying splice application, the top layer of a reel of e.g. release liner material is fixated by using split labels such as tesa® 54242. After that, tesa® 4200 comes into play and is applied above the split labels. After liner removal, the reel is ready to be spliced.

For a static splice, the process only differs marginally. First, tesa® 4200 is applied on a new reel's top layer and then the tape's liner is removed. After that, the end of the previously used reel can be attached to the open adhesive area. 

For flying and static core starting, tesa® 4200 has to be applied onto the core in straight line for static core starting and in a spiral pattern for flying core starting. The application is finished after removing the liner.

Splicing Applications

Flying Splice
Static Splice
Flying and Static Core Starting
1 / 3

Flying Splice: Fixate the top layer with split labels and mount tesa® 4200 above them.

2 / 3

Flying and Static Core Starting: Apply tesa® 4200 onto the core in straight line for static core starting and in a spiral pattern for flying core starting. Then you only need to remove the liner.

3 / 3

Static Splice: Apply tesa® 4200 to the edge of the top layer. Then, the tape liner is removed, the old reel is adhered to the new one and you only need to cut away the overlapping material.

In the end, meeting market requirements and providing high performance products requires high quality processes in each phase of the value chain. A step in the direction of highest process efficiency is the implementation of suitable splicing tapes. Please contact us for more information on tesa® 4200 and our complete assortment of splicing solutions.