heat tape problem, please help!

[trizzypballr]

Just finished up my new rack, ran heat tape on it. Hooked up my helix, everything is going great, rack is holding the temperature nice, and all of a sudden i realize that NONE of my silver foil tape is holding the heat tape down!! All of the tape is lifting right up when the heat tape is heated, how can i fix this, i was so proud of my rack and the stupid foil tape is all messed up now, what can I do to fix this?

 

[BalloonzForU]

Can you post pics of the problem. I have not had any issues with the foil tape. Mater of fact I've found it was hard to take off when I was replacing the heat tape.

I did have one problem with it sticking once, and that was because my hands were sweating from soldering all day that the oils from my hand would not allow the tape to stick to my rack.

 

[trizzypballr]

im not quite to sure how to shrink pictures on here yet, so i woulnt post them straight here, but i uploaded a bunch of pictures up to my server, here are links to them

http://www.reptirus.com/PB190055.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190056.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190057.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190058.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190059.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190060.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190061.JPG
http://www.reptirus.com/PB190062.JPG


to explain how i did things, as you can see, it is a 6 level rack, can hold 2-32 qt or 4-16 qt containers per level, I cut the heattape down to cover 2 levels per piece, forming a 'C' per layer. so the rack is pretty much made up of 3 'C's of heat tape. To hold the tape down i took the foil tape that came with it, and ran a piece on each side of the tape thinking that it would hold great that way with all that tape, but to make a long story short the tape has pretty much no stickyness, i extra taped the heattape where it comes down threw levels so it woulnt slide, but even that tape let go making the bottom levels of the tape bunch up and lift off the rack realy bad. Those were the best pics i could get to show what the tapes doing, it is most noticable when you slide a container in because the container just pushes the tape back. i left enough room so that the container should easily slide in, so thats not the reason this is happening, it is pretty much that the tape has no stick, did i do something wrong?

 

[BalloonzForU]

It's the wood, I don't think it wants to stick to that. Notice that it's sticking fine to the flexwatt. Try very carefully screwing the flexwatt in where the clear plasic is.

 

[trizzypballr]

hmm, that would be tough considering the rack is already assembled, maybe i could try stapling the foil tape to the rack, since the flexwatt is holding good to the foil?

 

[scottmckillips]

Is the wood clean or could their possibly be some dust on it from construction? That would cause the tape to not stick to the wood.

Scott

 

[ExcessiveHerps]

I've always has this issue with plywood and melamine, I've conderied stapling yet haven't got around to that trouble. For the worst of my cages which never stay I just apply the foil to the wall end of the tape.
Xavier

 

[trizzypballr]

as u can see in the pic, i even put tape on the wall where the flexwatt goes up and it stil let the flexwatt slip down and bunch up on the bottom