anyone know a european supplier for 3M 4955 VHB because 3m hellas does not supply in greek market this product and minimum order is 1 case.

Hey Sakis,

I also was not able to get the original 3M Tape but I found something similar from Tesa which I guess can be found in your country.
I will post tomorrow exact type of tape. It`s a lot cheaper and does the same!
Here, second pic you can see the tape being used on the Z.
Greetings
Claus

I found some double sided tape that can hold 2.8kg per cm2 in my local stationary shop and later in local car accessories shop. They are a fraction of the VHB, about US$2~3 per 2 meter roll. It looks exactly like what Claus used.
You may get lucky looking around your area.
Seek & you shall find.

Hope this helps

The Tesa Product Code is 55751. I have to ad that I also have mounting holes drilled at 100 mm in all racks, so the glue strengh is not so important in my case. It is transparent rubberlike and more a damper having a thickness of 1 mm.

Greetings
Claus

I have tried a transparent rubber (chewing gum?) type tape I spotted in our hardware shop the other day and I was not impressed with this particular brand. I would use any 3M tape (even not VHB) before using some other unknown brand.

Gerald,

Tesa Tapes is very well known Manufacturer in Europe. If you watch their Site you will find a lot of specialized Tapes for different industrial applications with modified acrylate glue which I guess it´s the same 3M uses.

Thanks i am going to check around for other brands i wall call 3m hellas again since Gerald suggest and others tapes outside this specific code they told me that have some others tapes that maybe will do the job.
Gerald can you give as some codes of the tapes outside VHB or general spec so i will be able to ask them and let them have a better view of what the needs are.

In 3M's range, I think you can use 4955, 4991, 4655, 4957, 5962, 4979, 4956, 4956F, 4016, 4026 or 4056.

In tesa's range, I see 4978 & 62936 (Greece office)

Thanks Gerald .

I dont know if this has been posted yet but a trick to getting the tape to stick really good is to use a heat gun. Stick the tape to the backside of the rack and then run a heat gun over it for a few minutes and then mount it in place on the rail. The only way I could get it to come off after it cooled down was to apply more heat to it again.(I had to replace to rack for the z axis)

Thanks woody for the tip.
Need a little elaboration, when you mentioned heat, what type of temperature do you mean, From where I'm from, our indoor ambient temp w/o air-conditioning don't go below 30 degree C. Metel under sun (not even hot sun) can reach 65~80 degree C. Do I still need to apply heat?

Ken, We just got out from over 20cm of snow. You are making me jealous. :)

I just run a heatgun over it till its soft and gummy so it sticks really good. I maybe heat it for 2 to 3 minutes(with the heatgun on high setting) and its good. Just as long as its soft and warm it will stick good. It may be warm enough where you are Ken that you dont need to heat it up. When I put the rack on for the x axis it was drooping in the middle so I clamped it up and a few hour later when I removed the clamps it was doing it again so I clamped it again and took the heatgun and ran over the areas that I had problems with and when it cooled down it fixed the problem.

Don't be too envious, its monsoon season, we had about 1-~20cm of rain daily for nearly 2 weeks & finally see some sun yesterday. In case you ask, yes, there are light flash floods everywhere.

Rob, thanks for elaborating, I did pull out a hair dryer to experiment and my alternative tape nearly melted... I played with it for a while & the best result is to heat up the metal to about 40~50 deg. C, but like you said, I probably don't have to apply heat after all.

In my case, surface rust, scale, dirt & oil on the surface are the worst enemy just as Gerald said.

FWIW, I used a tube of construction adhesive. I know that the stuff works better with porous materials, but so far so good.

The racks are secured with screws on either end after all, so the adhesive only serves to prevent the rack from sliding under the screws and to provide some support in the middle.

Also, the pinion is held against the rack (and consequently the rack against the rail) with a spring.

If it fails, the rack will rattle against the rail - no biggie. I'll then buy some sort of double sided tape and do it the right way.

Someone has to try the stupid things. Might as well be me. The way I figure it, I'm adding to the worldwide body of knowledge in a way that doing things the right way can't. ;)

Some good inventions and inovations have come about from someones mistakes. cyanoacrylate adhesives were originally a mistake. :) INFO

Hey all,

Nice and Fun being here.. folks, Got to look at the patch to fill the need either by glue or by tape..How about getting the glue under the rack .. as Smreish.. told.. was nice.. I really appreciate the idea from Greg.. too .

Paul.

.
.
safe adhesive tape

Any volunteers to downgrade the spec on the tape? :)

Because I knew there would be scepticism about double-sided tape to hold the racks, I nominated a very high-spec tape. This is proving expensive and hard to find. I am convinced however that even the cheap, common tapes will work perfectly, provided that they are about 2mm thick, and that the mounting surfaces are good.

Give it a go . . . I am sure it will work. :)

I am already volunteering for that! We couldn't find any 3M here, so we had to go for something that's called 'fanTape' available in rolls of 3, 5 meters at 18mm for around 1USD/meter.
It's the stuff you find in any hobbyshop/hardware store.

We also found white tape and much cheaper that came from china, but that didn't stick well on my finger at all (opened the package in the shop..... :D)

So far it sticks for about 2 weeks now, and I don't think it will fall off any time soon, I like it actually because it give a bit of extra flex to the racks.
I initially tried two small strips of 5cm on each side of the rack, as a demo for my father in law and even that worked without problems.

Just don't use the plastic tape, often found red colored you must use the foamy double sided tape.

Ries

My Home Depot construction adhesive so far is working fine.

Optimum? Heck no! :D

Gerald,

I was looking for some new tape and I found some duct tape that is double sided. I suspect that it would work. It is sold at Lowes in the USA and is manufactured by Shurtape.

I think that duct tape is too thin. The spongy 2mm thick stuff can accommodate the small lumps and bumps on the unground side of the angle iron.

I was having a little trouble finding the 3M tape at a reasonable price. Then I stumbled on this at an Autozone store... $9.49 USD

Hopes this helps someone else.

Jeff

I have seen a demo board for PL Premium construction adhesive that had about 30 different materials all bonded together. Pretty amazing stuff. You would probably have a hard time getting the racks OFF if you had to. :) Maybe some heat would help the removal.

The things that work in our favour for "sticking" the racks, with tape or glue, is the length and the huge contact area. That's why I decided to use screws for the short Z-rack. But I won't be surprised if tape/glue worked on that short rack as well.

oops.

I must have read the PDF incorrectly... I am using the tape for the Z aswell.
It looks good to me so far, but my machine hasn't been run for days in a row yet.

Ries

Now, that is good mistake! I'll follow suit :D

I personally used tape, not 3M, but the cheap stuff ($2 USD a roll) and it's been working great for 2 years now. With that said, I'm wondering why not use a product something like GE silicone. With the rail upside down, clean both surfaces with denatured alcohol and just glue the rack in place making sure to have the 2 end bolts in place, let dry for 12 +- hours???

Received this PM and felt it could serve others !
 

Hi Robert,

I found that you had a problem using glue (gorilla) gluing racks to angles. At the end what glue did you use? Did you use 3M VHB tape? Do you have some extra, and if you do, are you willing to sell it?

Regards Milosh

Hi Milosh,
This happened to me because two inevitable variables.
1st, the matting surface of both pieces, angle iron + mains beams are just a little too rough for this glue.
2nd, It’s a glue that does not tolerate much ( if any) air gap / space between the matting pieces.
So, I ended up buying a roll of this 3M VHB tape because it has this little thickness to it enough to tolerate this rough surfacing out of structure steel I got. Some structure steel may get to you with a baby skin surface. PLUS, I could see many other future usages for the extra left out of the 100ft roll.

This is what happened to me when I tried some of this lesser quality 2ble face tape, ONLY because I have rough surface out of my steel.

Attachment 9480


In my opinion, if your stick to plan by having these rack mounted to the angle iron with screws at both ends, any descent quality adhesive or exterior silicone will do lots better job than any polyurethane glue ( gorilla is one of them), that is only once you are certain & confirmed that all is in proper position and can move to a semi-permanent position.
The beauty of the VHB tape, even if it is VERY strong bond, it can be remove and have the surfaces clean a little easier than glue or silicone even if some glue of the tape remain on the surfaces.

ONE last recommendation, if tape of silicone to be use, I opted to wait after painting was done & cured, it make it easier to clean if for some reason you need to remove to re-position !

Hope this can help you & other too,
Good luck
Amicalement, Robert ;)

Thanks Robert,

it is loud and clear. :)

Milosh

thoughts on this...?
 

On Fastenal's webpage, they list a 1.1mm VHB tape from 3M. I was curious if this would work in lieu of the 2mm that the plans call for? Is there another location where I might find this cheaper? Uline seems to be significantly more expensive. Anyone interested in buying the unused portion of the roll for a fair price?

Eric,

I went to a bookstore where they sell that double sided tape.
up till today, a couple of months this just works fine.
as long as it's foamy, and is making good contact, you should be fine. The plastic type of tape doesn't work well.

Eric, That's a very common request. Ask around, someone is bound to have some to sell you. HEY DOUG F. or GREG...You have any left?

I think adhesive tapes will be the best idea for it to attach...



adhesive tape manufacturer

Why do I think that Sam of post #57 and Chap of post above are employees of Tesa tapes? :D

Tesa is a reputable brand and I am surprised that they feel the need to spam forums? :confused:

When I was in the construction of my MM, I bought the wrong adhesive tape. When your in the phase of attaching the racks, its pretty close to finish. In my excitement to get the beast operational, I used Gorilla Glue. I've been operating for approximately a couple of years now and the Gorilla Glue is still holding. I do have another set of rails and racks, but the original set shows no sign of wear. Just make sure you grease the pinion and rack every now and then.

That 3M tape in post #63 is very strong. I stuck a sign onto a door with that tape and had to replace it two weeks later after the client wanted a different sign. When I tried to remove the sign I ended up with the sign in my hand along with the tape fully attached to the back of the sign and part of the door stuck to the tape. It actually held so tightly that the top layer of the door came off with the tape.

3m double sided?
 

Hi,
I hope someone can help me,
I am looking for some 2mm double sided which 3M sells, could some help me by posting the product code. I have tried some cheap double sided but was totally useless :mad:

Adam

VHB 4991 is mentioned on the UK site, but suggest you give them a call at 0845 602 8083 to get an economical option.

(But, even the best of tapes won't stick if the surfaces have traces of grease, or other dirt.)

I used this and it looks like it holds racks great, 10m = 7 eur
it was cheap but it says its for metal pieces. I attached piece of PCB to my desk with same tape and will try to remove it after a day or two
here is datasheet from manufacturers website, it says 0.8mm but it looks to me a bit thicker, maybe after it dryes it will shrink.
http://sicadgroup.com/contenuti/prod..._770PROFIL.pdf
http://www.md-tim.com/mechmate/tape.jpg