3M Products

3M INDIA CONSTRUCTION DIVISION VHB™Tapes Product Description: 3M™ VHB™ Tapes provide the convenience and simplicity of a tape fastener and are ideal for use in many interior and exterior bonding applications. In many situations, they can replace rivets, spot welds, liquid adhesives and other permanentfasteners.

These 3M™ VHB™ Tapes are made with acrylic foam which is viscoelastic in nature. This gives the foam energy absorbing and stress relaxing properties which provides these tapes with their unique characteristics. The acrylic chemistry provides outstanding durability performance.

These tapes utilize a variety of specific foam, adhesive, color and release liner types to provide each product/family with specific features. These features can include adhesion to specific or a broad range of materials, conformability, high tensile strength, high shear and peel adhesion, resistance to plasticizer migration, and UL746C recognition. All 3M™ VHB™ Tapes have excellent durability and excellent solvent and moisture resistance.

Note: All 3M™ VHB™ Tapes should be thoroughly evaluated by the user under actual use conditions with intended substrates to determine whether a specific tape is fit for a particular purpose and suitable for user’s method of application, especially if expected use involves extreme environmental conditions.

⊕ 3M™ VHB™ Tapes Adhesive Types:

⇔ Multi-Purpose Acrylic: This adhesive bonds to a wide range of materials including metals, glass, and high and medium surface energy plastics and paints. This unique adhesive also has the ability to resist migration of plasticizers in vinyl substrates.

⇔ Modified Acrylic: This adhesive bonds to medium low surface energy paints and plastics, including many powder coated paints in addition to the substrates listed with the multi-purpose acrylic adhesive (except plasticized vinyl).

⇔ General Purpose Acrylic: This adhesive bonds to most higher surface energy substrates including metal, glass and high surface energy plastics.

⇔ Low Temperature Appliable Acrylic: This adhesive can make bonds down to 32°F (0°C), compared to 50°F (10°C) for most acrylic adhesives. This adhesive system bonds to most high surface energy substrates including metal, glass and high surface energy plastics.

⇔ Low Surface Energy: This high performance synthetic adhesive bonds to many lower surface energy substrates, including many plastics and power coated paints, plus smooth general purpose substrates.

⊕ 3M™ VHB™ Tapes Foam Types:

⇔ Conformable: This foam provides high strength with the capability of conforming to the irregularities of rigid substrates,even when there might be slight mismatch.

⇔ Very Conformable: This foam provides the highest level of conformability while maintaining high internal strength.

⇔ Firm: This foam provides the highest level of foam strength in the 3M™ VHB™ Tapes family.

⇔ Clear: Not technically a foam, this solid acrylic material provides excellent clarity.

⊕ Tapes

There are over 30 products in the entire VHB tape product family, each having specific features to meet the broad range of industrial requirements. The specific tapes used here were chosen to represent the three VHB tape series that have demonstrated themselves to be generally suitable for applications in the construction industry:

⇔ 3M™VHB™Tape 4955 (4950 series)
⇔ 3M™VHB™Tape 4956 (4941 series)
⇔ 3M™VHB™Tape 5962 (5952 series)

⊕ Structural Performance Tests of VHB™ Tapes in Architectural Metal Panels

Introduction 3M™ VHB™ Tapes have been used worldwide in a variety of applications in the construction industry. To further support their consideration for such applications, performance tests were done at Construction Research Laboratory (Miami, FL) to evaluate VHB tapes under stresses and environmental conditions that architectural metal panels would typically experience either as exterior building cladding or in curtain walls.

Summary Architectural metal panels assembled using three different VHB tapes underwent several sequences of construction tests to demonstrate their high performance in these applications.The tests included thermal cycling, air leakage, water penetration, wind load structural, wind load structural at non-ambient temperatures, hurricane impact, and hurricane pressure cycling.The panels constructed with VHB tapes provided excellent performance overall. They passed wind load structural tests up to 120 psf, which corresponds to a sustained wind speed of 220 mph (350 kph); wind load structural tests at cold and hot temperatures up to 60 psf, corresponding to a wind speed of 155 mph (250 kph); and hurricane impact and pressure cycling tests with a building design pressure of up to 60 psf. They also demonstrated that no air or water leakage can be obtained with proper assembly methods.The following table briefly summarizes the results of the construction tests. See the descriptions of the three test sequences and the complete Construction Research Laboratory test report sections for more detailed information.