September 26, 2007—A synagogue, a church, and a community services building, all in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, soon will share a distinction: they are the first structures in the United States to employ 3M’s breakthrough acrylic foam adhesive, 3M VHB Structural Glazing Tape, for exterior curtain wall glazing.
Already used for this application in thousands of buildings in Asia, Europe and South America, 3M VHB Structural Glazing Tape is an alternative to structural silicone for glazing. Unlike silicone, it requires no curing time, saving weeks of delay and precluding the requirement for costly curing-time space, according to 3M. It also needs no spacer tape, further simplifying and shortening the assembly process, says the company.
Moreover, because 3M VHB Structural Glazing Tape serves as both the adhesive and a secondary weather sealant, it reduces waste and clean-up at the application site.
3M VHB Tape has also received its first application for interior curtain wall glazing in the US, having been chosen for the recent remodeling of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.
In its first US exterior curtain wall glazing applications, 3M VHB Structural Glazing Tape has been used on a new five-story structure on 38th Street in the Boro Park section of Brooklyn—a building developed by the Jewish community services organization Yeled V’Yalda—which will provide medical and educational services there and use the property as its administrative home. A few miles away, in the Williamsburg community, the tape is in use on the 18-foot-high arched windows of a new synagogue nearing completion. And Brooklyn’s Salem Missionary Baptist Church is scheduled to remodel shortly with 3M VHB Structural Glazing Tape for its windows.
In each case, the impetus for using the tape is coming from the Brooklyn-based window company, Westside Windows & Doors, which is importing the glass and specially made aluminum frames from Israel, one of the many countries where the acrylic foam is commonly used for glazing.
3M VHB Tape, first introduced for curtain wall attachment applications in the late 1980s and then extended to curtain wall glazing in the early ’90s, is a result of 3M’s long history of innovation and leadership in bonding and adhesive technology.
For more information, see the 3M Web site.
