[chrisseaton]

I think they were asking… what is the z-axis? What’s the canonical co—ordinate system for tape? You just repeated that it’s conductive in the z-axis.

[akubera]

Yes, z-axis is the direction of the tape's "thickness" so electricity passes only from the thing stuck to the top to the thing stuck to the bottom (directly through the tape) without shorting the rest of the contacts.

I misread the question to be "what makes this 'z-axis' tape" rather than "which axis is the z-axis of the tape".