The Advantages of Hook Loop Fasteners

This forms a powerful bonding system that can support great amounts of weight. You can’t pull the faces of the hook-loop fastener directly apart; rather, you must pull a few hooks and fibers apart from the one of the edges of the two-face bond. When you continue pulling, the hooks and fibers “un-catch” a few at a time, making a “ripping” sound, and the hook-loop fastener is freed.

If you said, “Hey, that sounds a little bit like Velcro!” you’d be closer to the truth than you know. That’s because it is Velcro. Velcro is a brand name – the first brand of hook-loop fastener ever. It was created by Swiss inventor George de Mestral in 1948; de Mestral received patents for it from all over the world throughout the 1950s. The name Velcro comes from adjoining two French words: velour (velvet) and crochet (hook).

Today, hook-loop fasteners are a still very widely used in shoes, clothing, cars, and more. Among the benefits of hook-loop fasteners are ease of attachment, strength of bond, ease of unfastening, and low cost of manufacture. One way in which product developers increase the strength of hook-loop fasteners is to connect the two faces at one end and thread one face through a flat pulley, such as a metal grommet in a shoe. The faces are pressed together as usual, but the pulley principle increases the number of hook-loop bonds, thus maximizing the potential of the fastener.