What decides the hardness of coated webbing?

Coated webbing is more and more used in our daily life. For example, our laptop bags, gaiters, woven chairs, fashion backpacks and many luggage and outdoor products use coated webbing as straps or decoration. But for different usage, we use coated webbing in different hardness. For bag straps, we find the coated webbing straps are soft. And for domestic automobile bundling straps, the coated webbing should be harder. Here we come a question, why are some coated webbings hard and some soft? There are two main reasons.

Actually, the hardness of the coated webbing depends on the raw material and the inner webbing.

Firstly, let’s talk about the raw material. Now there are three materials for coated webbing layer. They are TPU, PVC and silicone. No matter it is PVC, TPU or silicone, they all have different hardness. Generally, PVC and silicone is softer than TPU. The lower the hardness of the raw material used, the softer the coated webbing will be. So TPU coated webbing is harder than PVC or silicone one.

Besides, even the same kind of material owns different hardness. For instance, the popular TPU materials for coated webbing are in hardness of 70A, 80A, 85A and 60A. That owns smaller number is softer.

Secondly, we talk about inner webbing. Two factors of inner webbing will affect the hardness of coated webbing. The one is the thickness of inner webbing. The thicker the webbing, the harder the webbing. The other one is density of webbing. The inner webbing is usually braided by polyester or nylon. When the warp and weft interlace closely, the webbing becomes strong and hard. The closer the thread interlace, the harder the webbing.

Of course, the material of inner webbing also make sense. Generally, nylon webbing is harder than polyester webbing when other conditions are the same.

In conclusion, both the material of plastic layer and inner webbing will affect the hardness of coated webbing.