“Adhesion to Fiberboard”? That’s A New One

One of the objective ways to measure how “sticky” a tape is is a test called “adhesion to steel’.

In this test, a length of tape is used to pick up a piece of stainless steel of a known weight.  The greater the weight, the stickier the tape.

This is a very useful number when comparing one tape’s stickiness to anothers’.

A more recent version of this test is called “adhesion to fiberboard”.  Fiberboard is the material most cardboard boxes are constructed from.

In order to measure how well a carton sealing tape sticks to the carton.

The number obtained in this test is useful for determining how well a tape will hold together a heavy box.

The actual results of this test can differ dramatically from the adhesion to steel test, since, quite often, it will be the cardboard that fails (starts to delaminate) before the tape fails.