Thread seal tape

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thread seal tape –commonly known as Teflon tape or plumbers tape- is a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) film cut to specified widths for use in sealing pipe threads. The tape is wrapped around the exposed threads of a pipe and creates an air- and watertight seal when threaded into a joint. Thread seal tape is most commonly a white film (the natural color of PTFE) and is used in plumbing applications, but it is also available in various colors. While pigmented thread seal tape is not materially different from the natural white tape it is often used to correspond to color coded pipelines (yellow for natural gas, green for oxygen, etc.).

There are two standards for determining the quality of any PTFE tape. MIL-T-27730A (an obsolete military specification still commonly used in industry) requires a minimum thickness of 3 mils (three-thousandths of an inch). A majority of the thread seal tape supplied to the US is produced internationally and does not meet the MIL-T-27730A requirement, despite being marked as such. The second standard, A-A-58092, is a commercial grade which maintains the thickness requirement of MIL-T-27730A and adds a minimum density of 1.2 g/cc. US domestic producers of thread seal tape, led by firms such as Taega Technologies, manufacture products which meet or exceed the quality standards of A-A-58092. These high quality products are used commercially in high pressure systems, where seal reliability is critical, or in joints with coarse threads.