This website is designed by Bill Chen of Big Beard Co. Ltd. Copyright 1996-1999.
Frequently Asked Questions About Teartape
What is teartape,tearstrip, or tear-off ribbon ?
Teartape,tearstrip, or tear-off ribbon are the same product with different names, normally we call it teartape. If you are a smoker, sure you know it, it is the narrow tape attached on the inner surface of filmic overwrap of cigarette and is used to open the package of cigarette. Even you are a non-smoker, you might find it on the package of chewing gum, CD and/or VCD, biscuits, envelope, and other consumer goods when you try to open it.
The answer for the manufacturer of above mentioned consumer goods is: giving convenience to your customer is giving success to your product.
The answer for the customers of above mentioned consumer goods is: Scissors? Knives? Teeth? or just Teartapes.
Plain teartape is the first generation of teartape. when applied onto the plastic film, you must have wax heated and melted in the wax bath of your machine, and adjust the temperature carefully to avoid the burning of wax or cooling of wax. The melted wax produces smoke and is dangerous to the operators of the packaging machine and the whole factory.
To avoid the danger and inconvenience, people invented wax-coated teartape. The wax is pre-coated on the surface of teartape during the manufacturing of teartape. It is not necessary to equip wax bath with your machine when you use wax-coated teartape, you only need to heat the iron to melt the pre-coated wax on the teartape. But another problem occurs, the heat-energy got by pre-coated wax varies with the speed of the packaging machine, thus make the heating of the wax uneven. Sometimes the wax is overheated and leading to the breakage of teartape and sometimes it is underheated and leading to the unmelting of wax.
The pressure-sensitive ( self-adhesive ) teartape is the third generation of teartape and is the most advanced teartape untill now, it avoids the shortcomings of plain teartape and wax-coated teartape. It is manufactured by coating of adhesives ( not wax ) on the teartape during the production of teartape. No heating is needed, no wax bath is needed, no warm up time required, and you can feel free to change the packaging speed anytime.
How should I apply self-adhesive teartape to my package ?
There are two small differences between using normal teartape and using self-adhesive teartape, the first is, the self-adhesive teartape should be guided over the rollers with adhesive layer facing outwards to avoid the accumulation of adhesives on the rollers, and the self-adhesive teartape should be twisted 180 degrees between each roller. the second is, self-adhesive tear tape must not be sealed with heat !
What is the difference between Hologo™teartape
and Hologram teartape ( Holographic teartape )? and what is the difference
between Metalogo™
teartape and metallized teartape ?
Normal holographic teartapes and metallized teartapes are used by some customers,
but people found that they are too bright because full area of teartape are
metallized or with hologram, and sometimes it will damage the consistancy
of package designing. Another disadvantage of normal holographic teartapes
and metallized teartapes is that it is too easy for counterfeiters to manufacture.
Hologo™
teartape and Metalogo™
teartape means Holographic Logo
and Metal-lized Logo,
which means that they only have hologram or metallized coating on the area
of your company's logo while other areas on the teartape are transparent ,
this technology allows you to design the teartape arbitrarily so that it is
completely compatible with your overall designing of the packaging.
What are the differences between PET, MOPET and MOPP material ?
Several years ago, teartape manufacturers were using cellophane, BOPP ( bi-oriented polypropylene ), PET ( polyester ) films to produce teartape, with the development of the technology, above films are rarely used because of some disadvantages of the film (e.g. cellophane is too moisture sensitive, inappropriate elongation for BOPP etc.)
Nowadays, teartape manufacturers around the world are majorly using three kind of plastic films to manfuacture teartape, PET, MOPET, and MOPP.
Here is a comparison of above materials.
More Questions ?
Please fill out following form if you have any questions about teartape to help us enrich this page. (All fields in the form are required to fill in to send out this form ! )