One hailed as a modern marvel of the Space Age, Velcro® or other brand hook-and-loop fastners have turned out to be "meh!"
I love Velcro, I hate Velcro. But first let's get some housekeeping out of the way. Velcro® is a registered trademark of Velcro Industries, NV for hook-and-loop fasteners. That's the generic name for Velcro - "hook-and-loop fasteners" but few people want to use that mouthful of words. It is like Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages. Band-Aid is a trademark which was perilously close to being found generic, but is being clawed back into the private domain by Johnson & Johnson, who explicitly always use the phrase, Band-Aid brand adhesive bandages.
That's the format: "[Trademark] brand [generic name]" - otherwise you risk the trademark being deemed "generic" and lose your rights. In the early part of the last Century, companies loved it if you used their trademark generically - it helped them define the industry with their brand. So you might band-aid a problem before Xeroxing it, before you weep in you Kleenex. Usually a bad sign your "mark" is heading to the generic graveyard is when people start using it as a verb.
So, like most human beings, when I say "velcro" I am referring to any kind of hook-and-loop fastener, not just those from Velcro Industries. And since the Patents have long expired, I suspect the majority of what you and I call "velcro" is made by third parties and branded as such.
What is velcro - or any hook-and-loop fastener? Supposedly, the story goes, the inventor was trying to remove burdocks from his dog's fur and realized these burdocks were quite sticky. Under a magnifying glass, he realized that the spines were actually hooked at the end, and thus tended to "catch" on things like fur or fabrics. The breakthrough came when he discovered that plastic spikes, when heated carefully at the end, would fold over and make hooks just like burdocks. All that was needed was a pile fabric to make the "loop" portion. Over time, however, the hooks break off and the pile of loops becomes unwound.
Supposedly, velcro really took off (no pun intended) as part of the space program - used to secure parts of space suits or attach things temporarily. The story I was told was that some smart guy got the brilliant idea of lining the Apollo 1 capsule with the stuff, so that objects used by the astronauts could be stuck to the walls wherever convenient. That way, pens and clipboards and other detritus would be out of the way, yet easy to get at.
Great idea, but in the early days of the American Space program, we used a pure oxygen system at 5 PSI or so, instead of an oxygen-nitrogen mix, like the Soviets used, at 14PSI or thereabouts. The lower pressure of a pure oxygen environment made the pressure vessel that is and was the Apollo capsule, lighter in weight. The problem, of course is that a pure oxygen environment means anything and everything becomes flammable - even metal (remember the experiments in Junior High where the teacher burned steel wool in a pure oxygen test tube? Right, that was cancelled in favor of more football - but I digress).
So, once a spark set off the fire in Apollo 1, everything caught fire and having wallpaper made of furry plastic didn't help matters any. I understand they removed the Velcro from later capsules (along with many other changes) and eventually, the US went to a oxygen/nitrogen mix with the Space Shuttle If you wonder why we stopped going to the moon in the 1970s it was because it was not a routine task and in fact highly dangerous. Apollo 1 burned on the pad. Apollo 11 came within seconds of running out of fuel and crashing. Apollo 13 exploded and barely made it back to Earth. I am sure there were other near-misses as well. I think one reason they cancelled the program mid-way (with subsequent rockets built and ready to go) was the realization that we were trying our luck and eventually something horrific would go wrong.
But I digress, yet again.
The first problem with velcro is, how do you attach it? While Velcro is an attachment system, it needs to be attached to something in order to work. In clothing and shoes, it may be sewn in, but my experience has been that, over time, this stitching pulls out and the whole thing is pretty much shot at that point. Other kinds of velcro have adhesive on the back, which is an interesting conundrum as if the velcro has a stronger attachment force than the adhesive, then when you try to pull it apart, the adhesive just comes undone. This is more of a problem for off-brands, such as you find at the dollar store. It is always a good idea, of course, to clean the area where you plan on gluing anything, with isopropyl alcohol, in order to remove any greasy fingerprints that may derail the whole thing.
Then there is life expectancy. I suppose you could argue that a zipper has the same problem - every time you zip and/or unzip it, you use up one more zippering out of a finite number remaining. Eventually, everything wears out, but some things last longer than others, and hook-and-loop fasteners seems to last the least. But perhaps it is because the market is now flooded with knock-off brands. Perhaps.
Still other types of fasteners are repairable. If your shoelace breaks, you can buy a new one and you are back in business. If the hook-and-loop fastener on your sneaker looses its ability to fasten (the furry part starts to come apart) you have to throw away the sneakers - or try to find replacement velcro and stitch it back together. Good Luck with that!
Buttons fall off, but can be sewn back on. Snaps can be re-snapped. Even zippers can be readily sewn in. Velcro clothing is basically disposable, once the velcro looses its grip. And let's not talk about how both sides of the hook-and-loop fastener tend to accumulate debris, such as pollen pods, dirt, and other detritus, particularly when on shoes. They even attract burdocks, ironically enough!
Again, there is a fine line on the strength of these things. Too weak a grip and your velcro pocket pops open, too tight and you can't get it open without using two hands. And of course, there are different strengths of hook-and-loop fasteners out there, but designers often choose the wrong strength.
Take, for example, my Wal-Mart (or Sam's Club, I forget which) shorts. A huge "cargo pocket" is held shut with a flap and two velcro squares. Problem is, the tear strength they selected is too high, so I need two hands to open this pocket. Worse yet, because of this, on one pair, it is slowly ripping out the threads holding the velcro to the pants (I wonder if the hooks do this?) and eventually the pocket has just this unsecured loose flap.
Velcro in clothing, in my opinion, just doesn't work very well..
It is used a lot in industry. Velcro is used to attach trim panels on some cars, so they can be easily removed for service - and more importantly, more easily attached on the assembly line. I use Velcro for a number of projects - I used it to mount the battery charger for my Lithium-Ion battery golf cart upgrade project. And in the camper, well, they attach all sort of stuff all over the place. You can't hang a picture in a camper with a nail. And yes, we have art in our camper - at least a dozen (small) pieces.
In other applications, well, it is less lovely. I've had various canvas items on boats that used hook-and-loop fasteners and, over time, the loops get loopy and the hooks less hooky. In some applications, the old snap works just as well, if not better. And snaps can be readily replaced with a crimping tool and such.
I guess it is like anything else. We are promised a new "miracle" product that will change everything and in reality, it just changes a few things, some for the better, some, well..... meh!
