Felt Sliders

The pad in action.

This quick project started when my family grew tired of constantly changing the felt pads on the bottom of our kitchen table chairs.  For some reason, they always ended up getting sticky and then slowly sliding off of the feet of the chairs, eventually resulting in failure and the prompt scratching of the wood floor.  After looking through the local Ace Hardware shop for a better solution and coming up empty, I decided to try a simple idea myself. 

The beginning of the end -- this pad will be a goner within a day or two of normal use.

The first part of my solution would be to use better adhesive.  I wanted the pads to be stuck firmly in place (though ideally removable if absolutely necessary).  For that I knew to look no further than 3M VHB tape -- the same stuff that's used to hold door panels on buses and certain semi-critical parts on airplanes.  The felt, however, doesn't come with VHB backing, and applying VHB directly to the felt would be only as durable as the weakest link: the very same backing of the felt that was failing in the first place. 

In order to better hold the felt in place and give the VHB something solid to grab onto, I printed some simple square pads with recessed centers that are about 0.5" on a side.  The recess helps to keep the adhesive-backed felt in place, because the walls of the square mechanically prevent it from sliding away.  VHB tape was then used on the bottom surface of these pads to solidly mount them to the feet of the chairs.  So far they've gone about a month without needing further attention -- already a household record!  We'll see how much longer they hold up with time.

the 0.5" felt square is trapped in place.

VHB multipurpose tape keeps the bottom of the assembly attached to the chair.