Stephen Ira worked as an inventor for a small manufacturing company where he developed several patents that included Velcro® brand products which led to his founding of HookandLoop.com in 1989, distributing Velcro® brand fasteners across the country. Stephen’s company has grown into a business that specializes in manufacturing hook and loop products that are used in the final products in many industries around the world. Stephen is a graduate of the University of Memphis with a BS degree in mechanical engineering and specialized in machine design and solar engineering. He lives in Jacksonville, Florida where he enjoys an avid outdoor lifestyle and spending time with his two daughters.
With hook and loop, many applications use adhesive backing. Adhesives are useful for applying fasteners to plastics, metals, and various other substrates. Now, sometimes these adhesives are applied with the expectation that they will be in place forever. In these instances, it happens from time to time that they need to be removed or replaced. So how do you do that?
One question we get occasionally is whether or not hook and loop material is washable. The answer is yes, and there are a couple parts of this answer that can be elaborated on. One is regarding proper care for hook and loop when washing, the other is about the material itself.
The types of sewing machines we use for reinforcing hook and loop straps with polypropylene webbing have some differences compared to a standard sewing machine you might have at home. We’ll go over some of differences between industrial and domestic sewing machines here.
This is a question we get regularly. It stems from the availability of our wide loop products, which are only available in the loop side (the soft, fuzzy side) in 12", 24", and 54" widths. There are no wide sheets of the hook side available. VELCRO USA manufactures low profile wide hook options in a 12” option but products like these have high minimums, often several hundred yards or so. Additionally, there are substantial lead times of 6-12 weeks on these products. To inquire about these hook options, please email us at info@hookandloop.com.
We offer several sizes, colors and styles of wide loop products. Wide loop is the loop side of hook and loop fasteners, manufactured in wide sheets for a variety of uses. We’ll cover some common uses here, but first let’s look at the different wide loop options we offer.
Sander discs are used on drum sanders. Many drum sanders and other large industrial sanders use sanding discs that are attached with a hook and loop fastener. This is so the sanding discs can be interchangeable and replaceable once the sandpaper or buffer or similar attachment wears out.
Pad printing is the printing process we use to imprint logos and information onto hook and loop. Typically, this printing is done on the back side of the hook portion of a custom strap so it will be outward facing when in use. We use a PLT 9 ink that is available in black or white ink, but we also have several other colors available for a $35 up-charge. This ink works well with our clichés and leaves clean imprint on the smooth nylon backing.
With so many different hook and loop products available, we're always surprised by how many uses customers have for it! And with customizations like die cutting and custom strap manufacturing available, our customers have no shortage of applications. So we thought we should take a moment to share some of those with you.
Hook and loop comes in handy for last minute no-sew costumes! Whether you're looking to fix your costume up, make adjustments to it, or make your entire costume out of it, hook and loop can help! You can get adhesive backed hook and loop to modify a costume or accessorize, or you can use iron on hook and loop to actually attach the hook and loop to your costume as a fastener. Beyond that, you can make costumes out of hook and loop itself.
We carry two brands of hook and loop products here at HookandLoop.com. In the VELCRO Brand, we offer black and white options in most of the products we stock. But in our DuraGrip Brand, we stock up to 25 colors of hook and loop from military colors to primary and secondary colors. We even carry neon colors!
