How To Choose The Best Cheap Reflective Conspicuity Tape & Save Money (3 Useful New Tips + Reviews)
Ultimate Guide
Save Your Money & Trouble on Reflective Tape
How To Find the Best Reflective Tape at Cheap Price (Expert Tips from Manufacturer)
Watch this video or read below post to find out useful information you need in finding cost-efficient conspicuity tapes or the best reliable manufacturer to work with.
Problems You May Encounter In Reflective Conspicuity Tape Applications
When you search on internet for reflective tape, there is a rich array of different types and colors to choose, good or bad ones. From our market research of online sales, many customers are not very happy with the reflective conspicuity tape they bought and, in some cases, even about up to 30% of total customer reviews are negative reviews.
Various quality problems happened, such as adhesive, flexibility, reflectivity, and durability (that caused money losses).
Most customers do not know much in reflective material products. For example, reflective tape of different colors has as large as 10 times difference in reflectivity while their prices are the same.
A comprehensive guide is hard to find, so in the video (above) or this post, we will help you choose the right type of reflective tape and try to avoid buying bad quality or knockoffs, saving trouble and money. Furthermore, good reflective products make you easily visible which is critically important for all.
We are from Toptend, an experienced and reliable manufacturer, supplier and exporter of various reflective conspicuity tape, reflective sheeting for traffic road signs, reflective fabric, fire retardant reflective tape and glow in the dark film or tape since 2008, among many other traffic safety products. We supply all these products at competitive low prices and meet international standards.
And at end of the video or this post, we will debunk some shoddy reflective tapes and knockoffs on the market and tell you a simple and quick method to sift out bad ones that definitely do not measure up to the industrial standards.
Before this, let us start with the 3 important tips first.
Tip #1: Reflectivity (Retro-reflection)
Customers often complain the tape was not very reflective or become less reflective too quickly.
You may not know these information in whole or in part:
Different grades and different colors of reflective tape have different reflectivity. So you should select the right type at first.
The different grades from top to bottom (listed in below picture) indicate their reflectivity from high to low, which applies to their prices from high to low as well.
Among them, diamond grade, HIP and EGP retroreflective tape or reflective sheeting are made by micro-prismatic technology with higher reflectivity while the others are glass bead types.
DOT (or DOT-C2) and ECE104 are two popular types of reflective conspicuity tape. They approximately represent a reflectivity level approximately from high intensity grade and above. But they are stricter than all the other standard retro reflective tapes.
For example, DOT-C2 reflectivity must comply with FMVSS 108 which requires rigorous reflectivity performance at larger and more angles.
Tip #1: Reflectivity (Retro-reflection) Continues
Now, another important information is different colors have different level of reflectivity. Generally speaking, for the same grade of retro reflective sheeting, check out the reflectivity level in the order from high to low in below picture. Their visibility difference could be as large as 10 times. And black color usually are not reflective or only reflective little.
So, if color preference is not important, and you want the highest visibility, choose white or yellow to save money (see below picture).
Among all the colors, fluorescent colors used widely such as on school bus, perform better than other standards colors at longer distance and more weather conditions, such as dawn, dusk, snow, rain, and fog because of its unique technology. But it is more expensive.
Check the picture: different colors of reflective materials or tapes on the market with high to low reflectivity levels listed from top to bottom. For example, white has the highest retro-reflection compared to brown color which has the lowest reflectivity.
Tip # 2: Reflective Tape Flexibility, Adhesive and Thickness
If use them on uneven surfaces such as curves or irregularity instead of flat surfaces, the retroreflective tape needs to have good flexibility and strong backing glue. Otherwise, they will gives problems like these customers had.
Check out these tests in below picture: our toptend prismatic reflective tapes stick tightly while other brands tapes lifted up one day after applying to the 90 degree curve.
To support good flexibility, the tape should not be too thick and must has strong backing glue. Thicker materials increase the possibility of being too stiff. And strong adhesive can most possibly offset the downside being stiff by preventing the tape from lifting up. However, being thinner does not necessarily mean good flexibility if glue is not good.
While you can not size up its adhesive property before you buy and test, you can try to get a rough estimate of flexibility on reflective safety tape’s thickness without backing film.
See below test pictures.
Taking standard prismatic reflective tape or sheeting as example, if its thickness without backing film reaches 400 micron (0.4 mm) and more (If not specially designed to be soft and flexible for this particular purpose), it is more prone to be inflexible.
Lastly, Tip # 3: Reflective Material Types and Durability
We find that many reflective tapes do not last long. For example, the typical time of color fading or other quality problems as many customers mentioned is from as short as 1 month to 1 year. Check out these customers complaints about durability time.
This should not be the real expected durability as it should be.
Check out the durability list according to ASTM D4956 standards. Within these specified period of time, they should not have appreciable problems, such as, color fading, delamination, edge lifting, scaling, pitting or curling. Reflectivity should remain 50%-80% after 24-36 months outdoor applications.
Toptend reflective products comply with all the above specified durability and at cheaper prices.
As reflective tape could be made from different types of materials, affecting quality a lot.
You might be wondering:
What material should I choose and definitely not choose for prismatic reflective tape?
The answer is: Acrylic, being more durable than other materials like PET or PVC. PVC prismatic reflective tape has the poorest durability and its thickness without backing film is usually below 280 micron, being the thinnest type.
We, at Toptend, use better raw materials such as imported acrylic with top notch technology for prismatic reflective products. For example, fluorescent colors are especially easy to fade quickly by nature even with acrylic material. But our diamond reflective tape including fluorescent yellow green has 7-10 years durability.
So, for your interests, we suggest checking out and compare these unsatisfactory reflective tapes or even knockoffs. Note their shorter durability and less durable materials.
P.S. You Can Watch The Video Above For More Details.
More Info On Conspicuity Tape Top China Manufacturer Toptend (Always Save Your Money & Increase Your Sales)
Please watch this video at the left on Toptend being a top manufacturer supplier of cost-efficient Reflective Tape (similar to 3M) at Cheap Prices, check it out and contact us.
We manufacture and supply vehicle marking tapes in reliable and consistent quality, similar to 3M 983, Orafol Oralite V82, V92, V98 / VC104, or Avery Dennison V6700B, V5720, T-11513 reflective tape for conspicuity marking, among others.
Such as DOT-C2, Diamond Grade, High Intensity Prismatic HIP, Barricade or striped, Class 1 and 2, including fluorescent yellow green or lime yellow color reflective tapes.
We will always make our clients happy and you can check out our reflective & traffic safety customers’ views on us.
Importantly many clients have worked with us for more than 15 Years and also we got famous brands clients such as Orafol who buy from us!
And we will continue with our great efforts all the time by manufacturing and supplying high quality reflective products to comply with international standards such as DOT, ECE 104, SOLAS, En12899 or ASTM D4956.
Furthermore, we will do our best to be your reliable partner in China.
