Far from hysteria, Steve ; unfortunately .
kapton insulation is likely the biggest airline sleeper (waiting to happen)
presently .
Your Navy folks (Jack & Co) did a great work on this subject ;
and today as far as I know are the only ones who grounded the planes and
diligently exchanged the looms in most of the fleets .
Air force was not so keen (keep dropping) ; and poor unsuspecting public in
jumbos and airbuses can only pray .

Seen the Navy tests on kapton looms ;
in basic as it gets fragile (if I remember correct 7 years is ok ; than you
worry) it may start sparking ;
once it sparks ; it does have a very nasty habit to develop to a fireball ;
melting copper and surround quite efficiently .

As production aid it's fine, as reliable wire loom insulation it's a very
hashed story .
As the majors (no names) are not keen on billions of losses on refits ;
we'll see much more of it (with consequent weird explanations) .

pk

PS
check Jack for details ; he may have even the test videos .

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen R. Gregory [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, 2 November 1999 15:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [TN] Kapton (Tm) materials...


Hi ya'll,

Not to start another thread about something that will upset people, but
lately in the media there has been some talk about Kapton (tm) materials
being somewhat unstable at elevated temperatures...there's stories about
this
with the recent crash of Egypt Air flight 990...

I, as undoubley as possibly many of you, have always understood that Kapton
(tm) tapes are what you should use when high temperatures are encountered.
I've used it on numerous assemblies to in the past to prevent such things as
a metal connector body connecting to a via that was mistakenly laid-out
without mask beneath the footprint. As a big as a pain in the butt as it
was,
we would cut a teeny piece of kapton (tm) tape to cover a via so that there
was no chance of a via to short to the connector. This is just one
example...there have been many other instances in the past (crystals,
oscillators, etc..) or with other components where I've used Kapton (tm)
tape
to do similar things...the tape needed to stay with the assembly as a
finshed
product.

Should I, or designers who specify the use of Kapton (tm) in this manner be
concerned about this? Or is this just media hysteria?

-Steve Gregory-

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