been used the nature of this design can cause plugging and the use of a thermoset silicone is expensive and limits the design of the product these emitters are also individually molded units and do lend themselves to continuous production easily a novel approach to solve this problem would be to use a continuously formed ribbon as the emitter and have that ribbon compensate for pressure by using a special flexible olefin block copolymer this ribbon can easily be bonded to the main body of the tube the flexibility of the polymer is only one aspect of the compensation technique the teeth of the flow path that would normally be bonded to the tube are not in this case bonded but instead a rail that rides slightly above the teeth is bonded to the tube this allows for varying number of teeth to engage the body of the tube depending on pressure and consequently compensates for pressure conventional design techniques require a pressure reduction area or labyrinth prior to the metering groove this area is also prone to plugging causing variations in the compensation capabilities as well as plugging of the metering groove the advantage provided by the invention is that the compensation starts at the distal end of the flow path and progresses towards the proximal end as.