The Ultimate FAQ Guide of Reflective Tape

 What is the reflective tape?

Reflective tape is a kind of tape with the reflective feature, widely used in road safety, construction safety, etc.

Reflective tape has two types, one is made of reflective film, the other one is made of reflective thread.

The common reflective tape covers iron-on reflective tape & sew-on reflective tape for safety clothing, and reflective tape for car, trucks, trailers, etc engineering vehicles.

How is a reflective tape made?

Reflective tape is divided into reflective ribbon tape and reflective tape film. Following is the process of reflective tapes production.

The production of reflective fabric tape:

PET film ->Heating -> PET layer coating -> Aluminize the PET film ->Transfer coating -> Drying -> laminate -> Treating -> Stripping PET – > Reflective Fabric

Prismatic reflective PVC tape:

The production of reflective truck tape：

How does reflective tape work?

The reflective tape has the reflective feature, can reflect the light back to the light source by the surface coating, which is mixed miro glass beads or prismatic.

The miro glass beads or prismatic can collect the light around the tapes, then reflect all light into one direction the same as light emissions.

The retro-reflective tape works with micro glass beads.

The reflective tape works with prismatic.

Does reflective tape glow in the dark?

The reflective tape will glow in the dark after meeting the lighting from road lights, car headlights,s or other light sources.

In other words, the retro-reflective tape glows due to another light source, it is not an original light source, thus the sew-on reflective tape and reflective sheeting tapes can’t glow in the dark by themselves.

When the light emissions on the reflective fabric tape, the light will be reflected into original source by the reflective layer on the reflective tape the same as below image.

What is the best reflective tape?

Fireman Clothing

The reflective tape for firemen needs high visibility and anti flame feature, when the firefighter comes into the firing building to extinguish, high visibility can help the suffered people to see the fireman, and the anti flame feature can keep the firefighter safer in the fire.

Safety Vest

The reflective tape for safety vest focuses on the high visibility and waterproof feature.

Actually,  the retro-reflective tape has limited washing time, multi-washing will decrease the reflective feature because of less micro glass beads.

About the high visibility, silver reflective tape is the best reflective color, because the silver color is the original color after aluminum, but the other color reflective tape needs color coating after aluminum, which will lose more light-reflecting. If you are interested in safety vest, you can turn to see XW Reflective safety vest.

License Plate

Reflective tape for license plates needs features of hot stamping, embossing, chromaticity printing, laser/thermal printing, and digital printing, some countries need ISO 7591:1982 certification.

You can check from the following table.

**Certified with ISO7591:1982

If you are interested in license plate grade reflective sheeting products, please contact us for more details.

Is reflective rim tape illegal?

Rim tape is used to keep you safer on the road, only reflect lights not show light by itself. Reflective rim-tape should be no more illegal than the reflectors that come stock with bikes. About reflective rim tape, you maybe want to know more details about our reflective bike stickers products.

Where do you put reflective tape on a trailer?

Back and bottom side of the trailer.

The red and white tape must be used for the back and bottom sides of the trailer. It must cover at least half of the total side length, the entire bottom of the back, and the entire lower rear bar.

How to iron on reflective tape?

Reflective heat transfer vinyl can be ironed on the clothing to make custom T-shirts.

The detailed steps are as below:

1. Cut a design or screen printing a design. XW Reflective can cut the design on big production one time for you, you can get the cut reflective HTV vinyl, or order printed reflective heat transfer vinyl from your local XW Reflective retailer.
2. Prepare an iron or heat transfer machine.
3. Put the special paper on the reflective HTV vinyl.
4. Adjust no team model for iron, then heat press.
5. Rip off the PET-based plastic Paper.
6. Done. The reflective heat transfer vinyl graphic is printed on the t-shirt.

If you want to know details, please turn to our other article: How to iron on reflective fabric?

How to remove the reflective tape from clothing?

1. Use the blower to heat the iron on reflective tape, then peel off the side of retro-reflective tape slowly
2. Use the sharp knife under to a corner of the reflective tape, until you can grasp part of the tape, then try to peel off the tape back slowly at a 45-degree angle. If it is broken, you can try to another side to repeat this step.
3. Try to place a thin layer of vegetable oil on the reflective tapes to soften it, after 3 hours, you can try to peel off the tape, if not, wait again.

How to remove the reflective tape from the vehicle?

To remove the car reflective stickers, you can first use a blower to adjust to hot air, blow the reflective stickers soft, and then you can easily tear them off.

On the residual adhesive, after the adhesive has melted, you can directly wipe it off with a rag. Glue removers are available in car beauty stores or car brush yards.

Instructions:

1. Shake the bottle well before using the glue remover. When spraying this product, do not use the bottle upside down.

2. Slightly tear the self-adhesive label, and evenly spray the adhesive remover 20-40 cm away from the paper self-adhesive or other residual adhesive. After the solution is immersed, gently tear the self-adhesive Just drop it.

3. The color of some labels after tearing off will be different from the color of other places. This is because the place has not been exposed to sunlight for a long time, and it has nothing to do with the use of glue remover.

Where can you buy reflective tape?

Reflective tape is a safety product, widely used in road safety, such as bikes, trucks, safety vests, etc.

XW Reflective is a leading reflective fabric tape and reflective sheeting tape supplier & manufacturer, providing quality retro-reflective tape at a competitive price, if you are looking for reflective fabric products, please feel free to contact us for more details.