Silicone Self Fusing Tape Review

Self-Fusing Tape, 1" wide, 30(mil), 36 foot roll     available in 1", 1.5", 2"; 20(mil), 30(mil), 40(mil); many colors

• PROFILE (Cross Section Type) > TRIANGULAR   available triangular or rectangular
• Colors: grey, orange, red, yellow, black, green, blue, red, white, clear, and glow-in-dark
• COST PER ROLL > $ 14.00 for 1" TRIANGULAR 36 foot roll

Description:  

It’s called elastomeric self-bonding or self-amalgamating tape.

Tape® is manufactured from a silicone rubber compound and:

·         has a self-bonding/non-adhesive characteristic that fuses to itself within 24 hours, leaving no mastic residue if removed.  Bonding can be quickened by heating

·         is capable of resisting temperatures of -65° to +500° Fahrenheit.

• has 300% elongation, stretches to form fit virtually any odd shape, and will not crack or unravel during expansion or contraction.

·         salt-water resistant and can actually be applied underwater.

·         an excellent insulator.

Lingo:

Elastomeric means rubbery
Self-bonding means that it sticks to itself, (but not really very sticky to the touch).
Amalgamating—meaning that it merges into a single body

Review:

 First Impression:

Tape is colorful, the samples were half an inch wide, and much thinner than I'd expected.  The tape is thin enough to see through as you can see from the pictures above.  The samples they sent actually measure 5/8" wide, stretchy, and odorless.

Use

Hey, this stuff is great.  I shortened a floppy drive ribbon cable by moving a connector and cutting off the excess, then I stripped the wires into 2-wire strips.  Wrapping took just a couple of minutes.  In fact, I liked it so I wrapped all my cables.  

Since the tape is made to overlap about 1/2 its width while wrapping, the color is solid on the cable.  It's flexible so the cable can still be bent to run where you want.  The nice thing is that the cable stays bent where you put it.  It's great.  The amount of tape I used was about 3 times the wrapped lenght.  In other words to wrap a foot of cable took about 3 feet of tape.

The finished result.  The cable ties are there to help the 3 cables fuse into a trunk.  The red cable is the floppy cable modified above.  The blue is the squared EIDE to the hard disk and the yellow is the IDE to the CDRW.

·         Advantages

• Colorful
• Inexpensive
• Easily removed with no residue
• Good insulator
• Will bind wires into tight bundle

·         Disadvantages

• The stuff isn't smart... It doesn't realize that you've finished applying it and you don't want it to stick to itself any more.  Any time wrapped cables contact one another, the stuff will stick and start to fuse.  This can be an advantage, in that it makes bundling cables easy, you just press the wrapped cables together. 

Conclusion and recommendations:

It's easy, it's quick, it's colorful, and it looks much better than cable ties or loom.  Tape can be removed if necessary without leaving a residue on the cable.  

Silicone Self Fusing tape is  Highly Recommended .