black paper tape = mylar? - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

6 Oct 2003

On Oct 6, 21:12, Ian Primus wrote:
...
  On Monday, October 6, 2003, at 03:28 PM, Pete Turnbull
wrote:
 > On Oct 6,  8:12, Lyle Bickley wrote:
 >> I'd contact the seller and ask them if the tapes are oiled (you can
...
  > smell the
 >> oil) - if so, they are not mylar. 
...
  > You can often *feel* the oil.  By a curious
coincidence, I was talking
...
  > to a guy, this morning, who still sells paper
tape and used to be
 > involved in its manufacture.  He told me how it was oiled in bulk, and
...
  > how they used to do it in small batches for
special jobs. 
...
  That sounds interesting, how is it oiled? I had
thought about that
 before, and I couldn't imagine just dunking a roll of paper in oil, or
...
  spraying it with oil or something. How oily is paper
tape anyway? 
Commercially, the oil is sort of printed onto the paper.  The paper is
passed over an oily roller before being wound onto the final reel.  The
film of oil on the roller is quite thin, and the quantity is controlled
by a system of additional rollers between an oil reservoir and the
applicator roller; just like the system used for ink on an offset litho
machine.  That's what I was thinking about replicating, to oil my own
tape, because it's much easier to get unoiled tape here.

For very small batches, I was told that they sometimes just dunked the
1" wide reels of tape in an oil bath.  If it's wound properly (it
should be moderately tight, not slack) the reel will soak up oil over a
period of a few days, without excess oil remaining between the layers.
 The trick, I was told, is to know how long to leave it so that the oil
penetrates from the edges of the strip right to the centre.

I said you can often feel the oil -- I didn't mean there's a film left
on the surface.  It typically has a slight sheen, and appears slightly
translucent.  If you slide a strip of oiled tape through your fingers
it should feel smooth, but not leave you with oil on your fingers.
 Think about the amount of oil you'd want to lubricate the mechanism to
punch a few yards of tape: not much.

To answer Joe's question, the oil is a light machine oil.  I'd guess
it's about ISO 30, which is about SAE 5, or less.

...
  I don't have any oiled tape, although I need to
get some for my ASR33. I
...
  have been using strips of computer paper to test, but
I am worried that
...
  the unoiled paper might wear down the punch. I thought
about having a
 stack of junk fanfold greenbar cut into 1" strips on the big machine in
...
  at work, but since it wouldn't be oiled, I
don't know if it would
 damage anything. Do you really _need_ oiled tape, or can you get by
 without it? 
It'll work, as you've obviously discovered, but from all acounts will
make the punches wear faster.  Greenbar is also much thinner than
proper tape.  Interestingly, I was told (this guy used to work in a
place where 20+ people produced tape, full-time) that most European
equipment specified unoiled tape, and generally only American-made
equipment needed oiled tape.  I'm not sure if that's because American
equipment needed the extra lubrication, or if it's something to do with
dust, maybe oily dust is considered too abrasive to be allowed to work
its way into small mechanisms, or maybe Europeans just designed better
lubrication systems ;-)

Talking of dust (well, nearly), has anyone (preferably in the UK) got a
spare chad box for an ASR33?

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York