Phone: 1-888-559-5959
Fax: 301-392-3353
Mail:
10477 Theodore Green Boulevard
White Plains, MD 20695
Is online shopping really secure?
It is on our site! We use software that encrypts your private
information. Your encrypted data is then sent to us through a Secure
Socket Layer (SSL) security protocol. This protocol is the industry
standard for internet security. All information you send to us is
private. We don't sell, trade or give it away to any outside sources.
How long will it take to get my order?
Orders placed by 3:00 pm EST, ship the same business day, unless
otherwise noted or on backorder. You will be notified if a backorder
exsists on a product that you have ordered.
Orders placed after 3:00 pm EST may ship the following business day, we ship Monday through Friday, excluding weekends and holidays.
Most products ship by ground delivery and may take 1-6 business days
for delivery. We reserve the right to ship via our carrier of choice,
which may include, but not limited to UPS, FEDEX, DHL, or Freight for
larger orders. Most orders ship within 24 hours of receiving your
order. If they cannot, you will be notified in that time frame. All
packages are insured at no additional cost to you, and an email will
be sent to you within 24 hours of placing your order with tracking
information. We currently do not ship internationally. We are also
very sorry to say, that due to changes within the USPS this year
(2007) that we cannot ship to AK, HI or PR at the advertised price.
Please email us for a shipping quote if you are located in AK or HI.
What methods of payment do you accept?
At the present time, we accept, checks, money orders, and Visa, and
Mastercard credit cards. We use
software that encrypts all the information you send to us. We keep all
the information you send to us private, and we don't sell it. Our
security measures continue even after you've placed your order. We
start by quickly removing your credit card information from the order
documentation. We then process your credit card on a highly secure
internal system, inaccessible via the Internet.
What is your privacy policy?
The information you give us is for our secure database and is not
given out, sold or bargained for by anyone else. The information is
only used for our records, to better serve you.
Why is my shopping cart still empty after I add an item?
To purchase items on our website, you must have cookies enabled in
your browser in order to use the shopping cart. We use cookies to
store very basic information on your machine. Cookies are small bits
of information that are written to your hard disk. These pieces of
information can contain anything from a login name and password,
dates, preferences, or visited pages. The cookies placed on your
machine are used soley to protect the integrity of your shopping cart.
What is your return policy?
-If the product is delivered and looks like it was run over by the
delivery truck, or like the product could be damaged, point out the
damage to the delivery driver/agent. Ask to inspect the package, if
after inspection you find the product to be damaged and are not
satisfied with the condition of the product due to the damage, refuse
it right there and then. Do not sign for the package. Then notify us
by email that it is being returned due to damage. Once we receive it
back and indeed see the damage, we will reship another identical
product out to you asap. (In some cases, once we track the product and
see that is being returned to us we can reship your order at that time
to save any further delays.)
-If you want to return it because of an error on our end, for example,
we shipped the incorrect product. Notify us by email for a RMA#, and
we will take care of the problem at our expense. It will not cost you
an additional red cent!
-If you want to return an item because, for example, you ordered the
incorrect size, color, or just do not want the darn thing anymore, you
may do so, but we cannot be responsible for shipping costs to or fro.
You will be responsible for any shipping costs associated with
shipping the item back to us, and we cannot refund shipping from your
inital purchase, as shipping was a service provided. A 15% restocking
fee will also be applied to cover the costs associated with processing
a returned product.
Free Shipping Items
Items marked *Free Shipping* are only applicable to the Continental
United States. These items will all be sent via our choice of carrier,
usually arriving in 1-5 days, depending on your location. If you must
have them delivered by your shipping method, you will be required to
cover shipping costs.
Can you ship to Alaska, Hawaii and International address' ?
Yes, we can ship to Alaska and Hawaii, although some items will need
to be calculated. Items such as Bubble Wrap, Bubble Mailers B Flute
and other large items, will need to have the shipping calculated for
address' in these states. The website is configured for the lower 48
states on these larger items.
International address' we may be able to ship to, all orders must have
shipping quoted. Click the contact us button at the top of any page on
our site, contact us for a quote.
Adhesive Tape Testing to Cardboard
Corrugated box manufacturers make a wide variety of surfaces and qualities to their boxes, depending on manufacturer, and can even recycle a percentage of old card into their pulp. The recycling process chops the cellulose fibers into shorter lengths giving a card of poorer internal strength, and so the more the recycled material there is in a card the poorer it is for a tape to adhere adequately to it, as those short fibers break away. So it is common practice for packaging tape manufacturers to work with boxes from major box manufacturers and test their tape against specific boxes of those manufacturers. Cardboard boxes with recycled material in it are usually marked, quoting the amount of recycled material.
To overcome this wide variation, adhesive tape is always tested against a standard quality card, as offered by the National Institute of Standards and Testing known as NIST SMR 1810A.
When paper is being manufactured, the high process speed results in the cellulose fibers being oriented in the machine direction, and those fibers are also at a slope in the paper. So quite a different behavior can be seen when the tape is stripped from a card in one machine direction, then repeated in the other machine direction, one direction 'catching' the ends of the fibers and pulling them away, resulting in cardboard delamination. However in the other direction it is possible to see little or no delamination with the same tape. We can see this phenomenon with the hair on our forearms, which also lies in a given direction. Pulling a surgical adhesive tape from the arm towards us can be quite painful, yet stripping it away from us is painless. The machine direction of standard NIST card is marked on the card, with instructions to test at right angles to it.
From my own experience in designing and manufacturing polypropylene packaging tapes for many years, I had always felt that if an adhesive tape, when stripped from the cardboard surface at standard testing speed and in both directions to the machine direction of the paper would delaminate the card, then the adhesion of the tape is as high as it need be, and I now need pay attention to shear resistance from the card. I'd also test in all four directions.
The machine direction of an unknown card is determined initially with another suitable tape which will delaminate the card in one direction but not the other, and certain grades of masking tape have been found to work well. This is found by trial and error. Once the grain of the card has been identified, it pays to keep a stock of the same quality appropriately marked card.
If you are going to do 180 degree peels from card, in addition to recording the adhesion value found, look at the adhesive surface after peeling and estimate the percent delamination of the card, recording that too, which is also a measure of the tape's performance. Remember that what you might wind up doing is not the adhesion of the tape to card but the delamination strength of the cardboard. Don't forget to run a PSTC #14, the 90 degree static peel test from card, which is a measure of the tendency of the tape to lift and curl away after prolonged dwell, and always use recognized competitive products as controls.
Types of Tape
- Adhesive tape is used for joining items with adhesive that coats the tape. It may be permanent or temporary.
- Aisle marking tape is often used to mark areas of caution within commercial, recreational and industrial safety requirements.
- Aluminum foil tape is used for vapor sealing sheet metal ducts, fiberglass duct boards and FSK systems because it uses a high temperature acrylic adhesive and has great conformability.
- Double-sided tape has adhesive on both sides in order to attach things back to back.
- Duct tape is backed by fabric coated in polyethylene and has innumerable uses because of its resistance to chemicals, water and abrasion. Some uses include packaging, sealing, masking and many, many more.
- Electrical tape does not conduct electricity and is used for insulation of transformers and inter-phase or to wrap capacitors, coils and wires.
- Masking tape is made of paper and uses a weaker adhesive so as to be removed without stripping paint or paper from the wall to which it was attached. Often used in painting to cover areas not to be pained.
- Non-corrosive adhesive does not chemically attack whatever it is secured to.
- Packaging tape is used to package boxes, cartons or containers, and is often able to maintain adhesion after a long period of time, in extreme weather and in extreme temperatures.
- Self bonding tape adheres to itself but does not fuse so that layers may be cleanly separated.
- Teflon tape is inexpensive, thin, white and often used to seal water, gas and air from leaking through threaded connections.
- Transparent tape usually utilizes a cellulose-based backing and acrylic adhesive, and it is transparent.
- Vinyl tape has incredible resistance to extreme weather conditions, moisture, abrasion, acids, corrosion and alkalies, and can be used in temperatures to 80 degrees Celsius.
Read BEU' Packing and Shipping Tips Page
Tape Glossary
- Backing (substrate). The primary component of tape upon which an adhesive is applied. Examples are cloth, paper, metal foil, film etc.
- Conformability. Ability of a tape to make total contact with a rough or uneven surface.
- Creped. Paper that has small "folds" to provide stretchability and conformability.
- Double-coated, or two-sided tape. Pressure-sensitive tape with adhesive on both sides of the carrier material.
- Gapping. Openings between layers of tape within a roll.
- Release coating. A very thin coating applied to the impervious tape backing so as to allow the tape to be unwound at a controlled level.
- Tack. The sticky feel of the tape. It is the initial adhesion without rub-down.
- Telescoping. A sideways sliding of the tape layers, one over the other, so that the roll looks like a funnel or telescope.
- Unwind. The force to remove or unwind the tape from a roll.
