Aerospace Bonding, Assembly & Adhesive Tape

An LSE (low-surface-energy) grade. Aircraft paint systems, decorative laminates, and composite resin surfaces resist wetting, so a general-purpose acrylic beads up, contacts a fraction of the apparent area, and peels under its own preload weeks later. AFTC LSE acrylic foam (6402–6420, gauges per the TDS designations) uses a high-tack adhesive formulated for exactly these faces; LSE transfer grades carry thin placard duty.

Clean both faces, respect paint cure times, and allow dwell before the bond sees load. Peel adhesion is reported per ASTM D3330 on each TDS; values per the TDS on file. [1]

Not within this page's scope, and an honest converter says so plainly. Structural airframe bonding is a certified design activity that belongs to your program, its approved processes, and its substantiation; no catalog tape page participates in that decision.

What the Structural Cladding family (SC06 / SC11 / SC15, lap shear per ASTM D1002 on the TDS) does serve is the load-carrying equipment world around the aircraft: GSE panels, rack skins, bonded doublers on shop hardware, and stiffener joints on ground equipment, where a continuous bond line spreads stress and removes drilled holes.

Aircraft-side, this page's tapes live in interiors, equipment, placards, and fixturing, under your process approvals. [2]

They frame the documentation, and the program owns the showing. Cabin-interior materials live under the flammability requirements your program applies (the FAR 25.853 context, cited here by designation only), and compliance is demonstrated at the installation level through the program's substantiation process, not by a tape datasheet alone.

Practically: the bonding tape is selected alongside the program's process approvals, its TDS and REACH declarations travel into the substantiation file, and questions about test coupons or installed-configuration burns route to the program's certification engineers.

H-O supplies the maker's documentation and lot traceability with every converted part so that file builds itself. [8]

The mounting-tape set. H-O Mount double-sided XLPE foam tape (rubber adhesive; 155 °F continuous per TDS) is the economical family: pads kiss-cut on liner that put instrumentation, cable clips, and accessory hardware onto panels without breaching a sealed or finished surface, with peel per PSTC-101 and tensile per PSTC-131 on the TDS; AFTC General Purpose acrylic foam pads (212 °F long-term) take the same duty where the bay runs hotter. Double-coated tapes handle dissimilar pairs (a plastic clip on a painted panel) by carrying a different adhesive on each face.

Two sizing rules: pad area follows part weight with margin against the holding-power line (ASTM D3654), and the bond gets its dwell before the part hangs. For test instrumentation that comes off later, use the removable set instead. [4]

Two answers by strictness. For controlled-adhesion fixturing, drilling templates, doubler alignment, trim positioning, the removable acrylic grades (AFTC 5106 / 5108 / 5115) hold through the work step and release without residue. Where no adhesive transfer is acceptable at all, because the surface is headed for bonding, painting, or inspection, PVC cling foam holds mechanically with no PSA whatsoever.

The discipline is classification at spec: a permanent tape used as a fixture leaves residue that surfaces as someone else's adhesion failure downstream, and a removable grade asked to be a permanent bond lets go.

Mark the fixturing stock visually distinct at the bench. Tack per ASTM D2979; values per the TDS on file. [5]

A silicone-chemistry bond line. Sustained heat softens a standard acrylic, holding power drops, and a static load creeps the bond until the part migrates. 1003 Polysil, the 3 mil clear silicone transfer rated −100 to 500 °F per TDS, is the default; AFTC 6004 / 6008 / 6011 acrylic foam (320 °F long-term) covers metal-to-metal brackets; SA1911 Polysil (silicone face / acrylic face, 300 °F) and 2378SL (polyester-carried, 302 °F) serve silicone-rich or dissimilar pairs inside their ceiling.

Frame the continuous service temperature on the drawing, read holding power per ASTM D3654 from the hybrid TDS at temperature rather than extrapolating room-temperature peel, and confirm the cooler face's energy class so the acrylic side wets it out. Values per the TDS on file. [4]

Thick enough to fill the real gap under light compression, and no thicker. A thin tape on a wavy composite or stamped face touches only the high spots, collapsing the effective bond area; an over-thick foam on flush parts wastes envelope and lifts at edges. The families span 0.006″ ultra-thin (815, for flush placards) through 0.118″ gap-filling General Purpose, with LSE at 0.008″–0.078″ and Structural Cladding at 0.025–0.062″, all from the TDS product designations.

Measure the design gap and the surface flatness, then choose: thick conformable cores for imperfect faces, thin transfers for flat close-fitting parts. Thickness is reported per ASTM D3652. [6]

Usually one of three pre-installation decisions. First, skipped dwell: acrylic PSAs build strength over hours to days as the adhesive wets out; a joint loaded minutes after lay-up shows a fraction of its ultimate strength. Second, surface-energy mismatch: a general acrylic on paint, laminate, or composite never wet out at all, and the peel was scheduled from day one. Third, wrong gauge: a thin tape bridging a wavy face carried the part on contact patches.

The fixes are at spec and process: LSE chemistry for low-energy faces, gauge matched to the measured gap, firm even pressure at lay-up, and dwell before load. Tack per ASTM D2979, holding power per D3654; values per the TDS on file. [5]

Yes; that lamination is half the value of converting. Transfer tapes bond insulation films, foams, papers, and fabric layers into a single part, a SOLIMIDE blanket with a PSA face, a gasket with a peel-and-stick liner, a placard pre-laminated to its mounting tape, so installation is one placement instead of an adhesive operation. The discipline is that each layer keeps its own TDS story: the tape's peel and the substrate's properties stay separately documented, which keeps the program's materials file auditable.

Send the stack-up intent (layers, orientation, liner side) and engineering will propose the lamination, the kiss-cut format, and the records that travel with it.

Yes, with the oven-capable set, and only that set. A standard acrylic applied before the powder oven does not survive the cure. Pre-powdercoat acrylic foam (AFTC 6004 / 6008 / 6011) is applied in the white, survives the bake, and remains as the finished bond line, so racks, panels, and GSE hardware can be bonded then coated as one piece. Heat-activated film (HA74xx / HA76xx) inverts the logic: tack-free at lay-up, it develops its bond in the oven heat.

Put the cure profile on the drawing so the survival or activation window is matched against the TDS, and keep standard acrylics downstream of the oven.

H-O converts. We take roll and sheet tape stock from the adhesive manufacturers and die-cut, kiss-cut, slit, and laminate it to your drawing in Winsted, Connecticut; we do not coat or compound adhesives in-house. For aerospace work that means: kiss-cut mounting-pad sets on liner for sequence installation, placards pre-laminated to their tape, gasket-plus-tape laminations as one part, and slit rolls to your width, with material traceability and lot-code TDS records under an ISO 9001:2015 certified quality management system.

If your assembly needs a liquid adhesive or sealant operation alongside, that is coordinated with the appropriate process owner rather than improvised at the bench.

The drawing (DXF, STEP, or PDF) or a sample part, plus the bond context: both substrates (the lower-energy face decides the chemistry), the measured gap and surface condition, load and service temperature, process sequence (bond-then-coat, paint cure times, oven profiles), removability expectation, and the documentation your program requires (TDS, REACH declarations, lot traceability). Every part is made to order; sample and production lead times are listed in the process strip above and confirmed with your quote through the form below.