Adhesive Technology Used on Non Slip Flooring and Safety Flooring

With one of the most critical parts of non-slip flooring being adhesive, it is odd that a non-slip flooring company will rarely get asked about what adhesives are utilized on their anti-slip flooring but to them, it is something that occupies a great deal of effort. A non-slip or safety flooring range has widely disparate uses; every day the director and his colleagues in sales discover a new application for a product that they have been selling for over 18 years!

As the uses are so varied subsequently means the adhesive has to adhere securely to a variety of substrates. Like most chemicals pressure-sensitive adhesives (PSA) have constantly improved their capabilities, the adhesives we use on our range of non-slip flooring are vastly superior to the materials we supplied back in the 1990s. Levels of tack, shear, and temperature range have improved dramatically, all to the benefit of our customers ensuring total quality.

Please find the most common adhesive questions below.

What PSA does Heskins use?

Heskins generally use modified acrylics (there are a tiny handful of exceptions for specific non-slip flooring applications). They like the all-around capabilities that modern modified acrylic PSAs offer, as mentioned previously their product has many varied demands made of it, they appreciate that the modified acrylics allow high tack levels, high shear levels, and superb temperature ranges encompassing extreme minus ºC to high ºC. All the transparent range has a further PSA modification to ensure no UV problems, please enquire for specific greyscale tests for each product if this is a concern.

Do you offer different adhesion levels?

Heskins do. In over 99.9% of cases, their adhesives on the anti-slip flooring are more than sufficient, however, for clients with a special demand for higher tack levels, we also coat the HG adhesive. For customers who take our HG x-coarse product, this adhesive is standard on their materials, for all others, it can be coated dependent on quantity. Our HG offers exceptionally high tack levels without any compromise on the other parameters.

How well do the adhesives cope with low-energy surfaces?

Low energy surfaces are becoming more prevalent and popular for various reasons; they are often the by-product of a shiny appearance or can be present in composites constructed from recycled plastics. An example of a low-energy surface would be after you have waxed your car you will notice the water globules form small puddles on the surface, the puddles are formed by the low-energy surface, and these low-energy surfaces create major problems for PSAs. Heskins has worked tirelessly to ensure that our anti-slip flooring customers receive high-quality non-slip flooring regardless of the surface energy level, to this end in 2008 we developed our LE adhesive. Specifically designed to allow excellent adhesion onto difficult surfaces this adhesive can be coated onto all our range, please enquire for MOQs.

What if the low-energy surface has lots of release agents?

They can still create a solution. Due to the vast experience in adhesives, films, and anti-slip technology, they have never (so far) been defeated and also offer two other possible solutions to aid our adhesion levels.

1). Use of H3506 primer - this has inbuilt keying agents.
2). Use of a specific keying solution - Heskins has worked with various chemical manufacturers to create surface keying solutions to enable adhesion on even the most difficult surface.

I want the opposite to the above points, I want something removable, is it possible?

It is. It is not rare for them to coat a removable adhesive onto safety flooring. They typically employ a further filmic liner (usually PET or PP) with a differential adhesive coat on either side to allow removal. As each removable adhesive application is often unique the differential levels are customized to the customer’s application, please enquire.

Just one more silly point, why does the paper not stick to the adhesive?

The paper is coated with silicon although some of the materials employ a silicon-coated PE film.