Hello People. and @Illumination@Newshound@R.Good and @peepeep
This post is an update of my earlier post Cutting Double Sided Foam Tape with a Plastic Saw I have expanded on the previous post with additional pictures and comments.
Not too long ago I posted Cutting Double Sided Foam Tape with a Metal Bladed Frame Saw.
Below are pictures depicting a much simpler plastic saw made from trash plastic banding I got from a Lowe’s indoor trash can. At home, I cut the 5/8" wide banding to a 7*1/2" length with a pair of kitchen scissors and then cut the tooth pattern along part of its edge with a bench grinder. It took me ten minutes to make it.
The picture below is showing a left-hand tape-saw made with a bandsaw. A hacksaw, coping saw, or scroll saw would work as well. I tried using Nail Clippers and Diagonal Pliers. Plastic banding is tough, my nail clippers are simply not strong enough and the diagonal pliers require too much hand strength. Your’s may work better. In case you’re curious my nickname at work was three fingers (more like 2-1/2) as a result of a fire-cracker incident 66 years ago.
It worked very well. For your information, I did set a comparison test with a typical fast-food plastic knife on the surface of my electric range. It took a lot more force while stroking the knife to go through 2sq. of tape. The teeth are too fine and the blade is thicker than the adhesive, probably causing additional friction. My homemade saw only required 10 seconds to go through the remaining 2sq. inches of tape. Probably because of the course teeth and constant thickness thinner blade.
My saw blade is 0.035" thick compared to the adhesive’s 0.055" thickness.
Quite a bit. Tested 6 different tape saws with and without solvens, a variety of household projects, testing FOV restrictions for multiple kinds of camera holders at various aim angles, projects for relatives and neighbors and so on.
Victor, the photo of your hand brings back memories. A friends of mine and I were making some home-made stuff almost 50 years ago and one went off in his hand. He got the worst of it and spent a month in the hospital.
Moral of the story, leave the explosives to people who know what they are doing!
Hello LonnieM.
Yes, I have, a heat gun works very well to soften tape. Especially on surfaces not damaged by the heat. I need to remove PLA plastic items taped to a window to another location. My concern is that the nature of PLA prints have a lot of infill voids that act as insulation requiring lengthy heating with possible heat damage to the print. Also, thermal shock and cracking of the window are a possibility. I favored mechanical cutting through the tape to release the print and then removal of the tape residue from their respective surfaces with scraping and solvents.
Your post reminded me that heat guns are very useful for molding plastic. See pictures below:
Peepeep, It’s not as often as I would like. In some cases, an alternate approach provides for other materials, methods, geometry, or tooling. So maybe sometimes it is not better so much as different.
I try to present methods that don’t require exotic materials, equipment, or skills.
Thanks for the comment.
Victor.
